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WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS 

BY THE LATE CHARLES ISAAC ELTON 

ONE OF HER LATE MAJESTY'S COUNSEL 

AUTHOR OF THE TENURES OF KENT 

THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH 

HISTORY 

&c. 

EDITED BY A. HAMILTON THOMPSON 

WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR BY 

ANDREW LANG 



NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

1904 



^-R»«W 



.t^ 



l^^oH-"^ 



Printed in Great Britain 






PREFATORY NOTE 

THE following chapters have been formed from the 
greater portion of a series of papers, which the 
author evidently intended to be the nucleus of an ex- 
haustive work upon Shakespeare. This series dealt 
with two special subjects. One part of it concerned 
the biography and family-history of Shakespeare, and 
the various places with which his name can be con- 
nected. The other division embraced several historical 
studies, relating to the sources and production of The 
Tempest. 

The shape in which these papers were left by Mr. 
Elton was incomplete and disconnected. Some had 
undergone revision : in some cases, two almost parallel 
versions, apparently of the same chapter, existed, testi- 
fying to the scholarly care with which the work had 
been undertaken and planned. There was no definite 
indication, however, of the final shape which it had 
been intended to assume. To the state of completeness 
at which the various parts had arrived, inference was 
the only guide ; their purposed order was matter for 
pure conjecture. 

A number of representative chapters, therefore, have 
been selected from the papers, which may define, in 
some measure, the scope and character of the book 
thus begun. By a collation of all the existing versions 



vi PREFATORY NOTE 

of chapters and separate details, the editor has en- 
deavoured to retain everything that seemed to him 
ready for publication, while giving each chapter com- 
pleteness and continuity, so far as was possible, within 
itself. Almost all the matter in the first of the divisions 
mentioned above has been included. Much of the 
portion relating to The Tempest was in so unfinished 
a condition that it could not have been inserted with- 
out fundamental alteration. Fortunately, three of the 
existing chapters on that subject were in such a state 
that they could be printed, to all intents and purposes, 
as they were left : the fourth is the result of a collation 
of two parallel chapters, in which Mr. Elton's text, 
with a few necessary changes, has been carefully pre- 
served. The chief portion of the editor's task has 
lain in verifying the quotations with which the book 
abounds, and supplying the footnotes and references. 
As the papers supplied few clues, beyond the names of 
the authors, to these quotations and references, this 
task has involved some time ; and the publication of 
the book has been delayed unavoidably thereby. 

It has been the one object of the editor, in under- 
taking his part in the work, to present these papers in 
their true light as a sound and weighty contribution to 
Shakespearean scholarship. If, in many cases, they 
deal with familiar aspects of the subject, their attitude 
seems to him to be distinguished by singular independ- 
ence of view, and by a characteristic ability to produce 
and handle the complex details of evidence, often of a 
confusing and contrary nature. They bear convincing 
witness to the learning and wide research of their 

accomplished author. 

A. H. T. 

Chichester, 

January, 1904. 




CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Charles Isaac Elton . . . ... 3 

Facts and Traditions Relating to Shakespeare's Early Life 21 



Stratford-on-Avon . . . ... 63 

I. origin of name— prehistoric remains : PATHLOW AND THE 

liberty — roman roads in warwickshire — ryknield 
street in "cymbeline" . . ... 63 

11. medieval stratford : its connection with the bishops 
of worcester — growth of the town — the fairs and 
markets— episcopal rights in stratford— officers of 
the medieval borough . . , . . ^j 

iii. the parish church — college of priests — leland and 
loveday : their accounts of the church and monu- 
MENTS . . . . ... 80 

IV. THE GUILD OF THE HOLY CROSS : EARLY RULES AND CUSTOMS 

— RE-FOUNDATION BY HENRY IV. — THE CHAPEL . . 83 

V. INTERIOR OF THE GUILD CHAPEL — THE DANCE OF DEATH: 
. SHAKESPEARE'S PICTURES OF DEATH — DESCRIPTION OF OTHER 
FRESCOES . . . . ... 86 

VI. THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL— THE GUILD-HALL : PERFORMANCES OF 
PLAYS THEREIN — THE SCHOOLROOMS — THE NEW CORPORA- 
TION (1553) . . . ... 97 

SNITTERFIELD, WiLMCOTE, AND THE MANOR OF ROWINGTON . I07 

Midland Agriculture and Natural History in Shake- 
speare's Plays . . . . . . 139 



viii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Landmarks on the Stratford Road and in London, 1586-1616 179 

I. Shakespeare's journey to London {e. 1586) . . .179 

II, the road to LONDON— ROLLRIGHT STONES— GRENDON UNDER- 
WOOD — AYLESBURY TO UXBRIDGE . ... 182 

III. UXBRIDGE TO TYBURN— ST. GILES' , ... 19O 

IV. gray's inn — THE REVELS OF 1594 AND "THE COMEDY OF 

errors" — "twelfth night" AT THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, 
160I-2 . . . . ... 193 

V. THE GARDENS OF GRAY'S INN — JOHN GERARD's GARDEN IN 

HOLBORN . . . . ... 201 

VI. SHAKESPEARE A HOUSEHOLDER IN BISHOPSGATE — CROSBY PLACE 205 

VII. THE PARISH OF ST. HELEN'S— DESCRIPTION IN STOW'S "survey" 2IO 

Shakespeare's Descendants — His Death and Will . . 223 

I. Shakespeare's family — marriage of susanna shakespeare 

TO JOHN HALL— disposal OF SHAKESPEARE'S REAL PROPERTY 

— THE poet's legacy TO HIS WIFE . . . . 223 

II. Shakespeare's death — description of the stratford 

MONUMENT — DETAILED NOTES ON THE EPITAPH — JOHN 
hall : ITS POSSIBLE AUTHOR . ... 23O 

III. JOHN hall's CASE-BOOKS — INFORMATION WITH REGARD TO HIS 

WIFE AND DAUGHTER — HIS WIDOW . ... 239 

IV. JUDITH SHAKESPEARE — HER MARRIAGE TO THOMAS QUINEY — 

HER PLACE IN HER FATHER'S WILL — THE QUINEY FAMILY — 
ALLUSIONS TO GROCERS AND DRUGGISTS IN SHAKESPEARE . 252 

V. ELIZABETH HALL — HER MARRIAGES — HER WILL — SUBSEQUENT 

FORTUNES OF SHAKESPEAJIE's STRATFORD PROPERTY . . 265 

Illustrations of Shakespeare in the Seventeenth Century 277 
I. Howell's Letters : 
I. Howell's relations with ben jonson — his lines on 

DAVIES' welsh GRAMMAR — LONG MELFORD IN SHAKESPEARE 

AND IN Howell's letters . . ... 277 

II. HOWELL ON TRADE AND COMMERCE — WINES AND ALES . . 282 

III. HOWELL AT VENICE — ILLUSTRATIONS OF "THE TEMPEST," 

" OTHELLO," ETC. . . . ... 286 

IV. ANECDOTES AND LEGENDS IN HOWELL'S LETTERS — IRISH FOLK- 
LORE—JOAN OF ARC . . ... 293 



CONTENTS ix 

II. Ward's Diary: 

I, THE REV. JOHN WARD — HIS MEDICAL TRAINING — HIS REMARKS page 

ON CLERGY AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION . . . 298 

II. WARD AT STRATFORD — HIS NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE'S DEATH — 

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY EPIDEMICS— CONVIVIAL HABITS OF 
THE DAY . . . . ... 304 

III. ward's MEMORANDA ON SHAKESPEARE'S ART — ILLUSTRATIVE 

PHRASES IN THE DIARY . . . . . 3II 

IV. HISTORICAL REFERENCES — WARD ON THE HISTORY AND AN- 
TIQUITIES OF STRATFORD AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD — HIS 
ACQUAINTANCE WITH SHAKESPEARE'S RELATIONS . • 317 

III. DowDALL, Aubrey, Etc. : 

I. DOWDALL's letter to SOUTHWELL, 1693 — RODD's PREFACE — 

DOWDALL AT KINETON — HIS VISIT TO STRATFORD . . 327 

II. DOWDALL's visit to WARWICK — THE BEAUCHAMPS AND NE- 
VILLES IN SHAKESPEARE — THE GREVILLES . . . 334 

III. WILLIAM hall's LETTER TO EDWARD THWAITES, 1694 . . 339 

IV. A NOTE BY GILDON — AUBREY — MR. BEESTON's INFORMATION 

IN Aubrey's mss. — the "butcher-boy" and davenant 

LEGENDS . . . . ... 343 

V. ALLUSIONS BY SHAKESPEARE TO THE BUTCHER's TRADE — 

inconsistency of evidence on the point . . . 348 

The Production of "The Tempest" . ... 357 

I. Hunter's Theories, 1839: 

I. hunter's "disquisition on 'the tempest'" — ralegh's 

"description of GUIANA " — DEWLAPPED MOUNTAINEERS 
AND HEADLESS MEN . . ... 357 

II. "the tempest" AND JONSON'S " EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR" 

— FLORIO'S "MONTAIGNE" — " LOVE'S LABOUR'S WON" . 368 

III. LAMPEDUSA — A SUPPOSED ORIGINAL FOR "THE TEMPEST" — 

THE MAGIC OF "THE TEMPEST " — SHAKESPEARE AND ARIOSTO 374 

II. The Marriage of the Earl of Essex, and Jonson's 

"Masque of Hymen," 1606: 
I. Essex's marriage — errors as to exact nature of cere- 
mony — MARRIAGE OF LADY ESSEX TO ROCHESTER, 1613 — 
ACCOUNT OF THE CEREMONIES AND MASQUES . . 395 

II. SHAKESPEARE'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS MASQUES — JONSON's 

"masque of hymen" — PARALLELS WITH "THE TEMPEST" 4IO 



X CONTENTS 

III. The Marriage of the Princess Elizabeth, 1613 : page 

I. ACCOUNT OF THE MARRIAGE CEREMONIES . . . 423 

II. PLAYS ACTED AT WHITEHALL AND HAMPTON COURT, 1613 — 

STORY OF THE " VERTUE MSS." . ... 434 

IV. On A Possible Performance at the Blackfriars, 

c. 1606 : 
The Blackfriars Theatre and the Companies of 
Boy Actors . . , ... 450 

I. blackfriars — history of the theatre . . . 451 

II. construction of the theatre — its probable appearance 

AND SCENIC arrangements . ... 457 

III. CHARACTERISTICS OF PRIVATE THEATRES — SITTING ON THE 

STAGE — THE INDUCTION TO JONSON's " CYNTHIA'S REVELS " 463 

IV, THE CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL — NATHANIEL FIELD — THE 

PART OF ARIEL IN "THE TEMPEST" . ... 469 

V. THE CHILDREN OF THE QUEEN'S REVELS AT BLACKFRIARS . 475 

vi. the dispute of 1655 between proprietors and actors at 

the globe and blackfriars . ... 481 

Index . . . . . ... 485 




CHARLES ISAAC ELTON 




CHARLES ISAAC ELTON 



THE author of the following studies, a man of many- 
unusual accomplishments, of numerous interests, 
and of the kindest nature, Mr. Charles Elton, was born 
at Southampton, on December 6th, 1839. He was the 
eldest son of Mr. Frederick Bayard Elton, his mother 
being a daughter of Sir Charles Elton, Bart., of 
Clevedon Court, on the Bristol Channel. Hard by 
the ancient and beautiful house is the church where 
Arthur Hallam sleeps, and the place is full of memories 
of Tennyson and Thackeray. 

It was not the privilege of the writer to have any 
acquaintance with Mr. Elton till he met him in London, 
about 1878-80, and he is obliged to the kindness of 
Mr.' John White, c.b., for the following reminiscences 
of earlier years, and of a companionship more intimate. 
Mr. White writes: "Charles Elton was in the head 
class at Cheltenham College along with me for, I think, 
about two years, before we both went up, almost at the 
same time, to Oxford. There we were again together, 
at Balliol, until Elton was elected to an open Fellowship 
at Queen's ; and as, very shortly afterwards, I also 
became a Fellow of Queen's, we were, throughout our 
school and college lives, very much thrown together, 



4 CHARLES ISAAC ELTON 

and, indeed, at the University were almost inseparable 
companions. 

^' Neither at school nor college was Elton studious in 
the ordinary sense of the term. At Cheltenham he sat 
contentedly low down in his class; but I believe that 
if any class-mate capable of judging had been asked 
to point to a boy of genius, he would have been apt to 
point straight to Elton. In fact, only one other boy 
among us would, I think, have had a chance against 
Elton in such a competition — the late Frederick Myers. 
These two had several points in common. Both were 
wonderful boy-poets. Nothing produced by Elton, 
perhaps, equalled the marvellous three poems, all 
differing from each other totally in metre, style, and 
treatment of subject, which were sent in by Myers for a 
school prize on ' Belisarius,' and of which two were 
bracketed 'equal first,' while a second prize, specially 
awarded in that year, was only lost by the third through 
some curiously defective rhymes. But Elton also won 
our English verse prize, for two or three years in 
succession, with very beautiful compositions, richly 
eloquent in language, elegant in finish, harmonious in 
cadence, often exhibiting a certain gorgeousness of 
imagination which was distinctive of him, and rising 
sometimes into bursts of very genuine poetry. 

''Old Cheltonians may still recall what was, perhaps, 
his greatest effort of this kind — a poem written during 
the Crimean war on av8pu)v yap e-TricpavSiv iraara yfj Ta(po?, 
and the fine rendering of its Greek subject in its last 
lines — 

" ' Far other monuments their praise rehearse — 
The grave of heroes is the universe ! ' 

"Apart from their poetic rivalry, Elton and Myers 
resembled each other in being alike the despair of our 
headmaster, the Rev. William Dobson, that great 
scholar and remarkable man, who created Cheltenham 



SCHOOL-DAYS 5 

College, and had in Elton's day already made it a school 
of nearly seven hundred boys. For a youth of manifest 
power and yet complete indifference to success in the 
ordinary routine work of the school, Dobson had no 
toleration ; and accordingly these two, sitting at the 
bottom of the class, moved his ire not a little, especially 
Elton. That Elton, however careless of the daily set 
task, was reading omnivorously all the time, would not 
have consoled Dobson if he knew it. We boys knew 
it, and it impressed us much. I remember an account 
of Spinoza's philosophy given me by Elton long before 
we left school, and made so interesting by him that, 
though I was hearing the philosopher's name absolutely 
for the first time, I recalled, years afterwards at Oxford 
when reading of Spinoza, what Elton had then told me 
about him, and was amazed at the masterly grasp got 
by a schoolboy of a system of philosophy so difficult 
and obscure. But a vague pursuit of knowledge for its 
own sake was not encouraged by our headmaster, and 
Elton showed no promise or desire of attaining what to 
Dobson seemed the schoolboy's true goal — a scholarship 
at Balliol. Indeed, even in the kind of acquaintance 
he displayed with Latin and Greek — almost our sole 
subjects of study — Elton diverged very widely from 
our teacher's ideal. Dobson loved composition which 
imitated with an absolutely slavish fidelity a correctly 
chosen classical model, and he was capable of chuckling 
with delight over an exact reproduction of a Thucy- 
didean ' anacoluthon.' Elton, who had wandered 
through all sorts of Silver Age and mediseval Latin, 
wrote a Latin style certainly not Augustan, but as 
certainly his own. Such composition was not likely to 
win applause in our class, but to have produced it there 
at all showed, I think, original power. 

" As a freshman at Balliol I remember being handed 
by Jowett a piece of English to be put into Latin. 
Straight from the school of Dobson, I, seeing it was 



6 CHARLES ISAAC ELTON 

historical, asked whether I should ' try to do it into the 
style of Livy or of Tacitus.' After the characteristic 
pause, and with a characteristic smile, ' Do it into good 
Latin,' said Jowett ; and his words were a sort of 
revelation to me. Elton needed no such revelation. 
He was proof against the imitative system of classical 
composition which was inculcated at Cheltenham, and 
in nothing written by him do I ever remember to 
have detected the slightest copying of any other man's 
style. 

"In personal appearance, Elton as a schoolboy and 
undergraduate was a strong contrast to what he after- 
wards became. The slim youth, whom I recall, with 
his pale, grave, interesting face and deep-blue, poetic 
eyes, had an air of languor strikingly different from the 
mien of that man of very full figure and exuberant 
vitality, who in later life impressed all who saw him 
with an idea of masterful force and energy. Elton's 
early taste for studies beyond his years has been men- 
tioned, but it probably never occurred to anybody to 
call him 'precocious.' He looked in boyhood much 
older than he was, and the maturity of his mind was 
what you would have expected from his looks. That 
his youthful languor gave place to higher spirits and 
more self-assertive activity was, no doubt, the result 
of a distinct improvement in health, and this in turn 
was undoubtedly a result of a life of quite singularly 
happy and suitable conditions. In youth, even more 
than most lads, he was careless of his health, and he 
certainly never seemed strong. At no outdoor game 
was he expert, though he could enjoy fives and racquets, 
and sometimes at school joined in football. But at 
indoor games he was always good. From boyhood 
he was a capital billiard player and he had a great 
knowledge of whist. When towards middle age he 
grew more robust, he took keen pleasure in shooting 
and lawn tennis ; but when at school and college, he 



AT OXFORD 7 

never joined at all in the commonest open-air amuse- 
ments — the cricket and rowing. 

*'To the pursuit of university honours Elton never 
really applied himself with any devotion. His first- 
classes in Moderations and the Final School of Law and 
History, his Vinerian Scholarship, and his fellowship 
at Queen's were got without effort. At Balliol he con- 
tinued to be the wide and somewhat random rover 
through many kinds of literature he had begun to be 
at school, and his scholarship remained of a doubtfully 
classical kind, ill suited for winning ' Hertfords ' or 
'Irelands.' His later love of archaeology had not yet 
shown itself, and to philology — just commencing to be 
regarded at Oxford as an essential part of good scholar- 
ship—he paid small attention. The only prize exercise 
he tried for was, I think, the Newdigate, and it was an 
open secret that his poem on ' The Vikings ' was placed 
first for that prize by certainly not the least eminent 
of the judges — Matthew Arnold. When odes in 
honour of the present Queen were called for by the 
University, on her visit to Oxford soon after her 
marriage, Elton's English ode was, with one other, 
selected for recitation out of numerous competitors. In 
the Final School of Literas Humaniores, Elton had not 
studied the set books carefully enough to give himself a 
fair chance of a first class ; but he nearly got one, not- 
withstanding ; and when he heard of his second, said 
at once that he had time to cover it by getting a first 
in. Law and History, which he proceeded to do in 
remarkably brilliant style. 

'' But however desultory was his pursuit of honours, 
and however devious and undisciplined his reading, I 
believe that Elton educated himself very effectively at 
Oxford, and left it a remarkably well-informed man. 
Of standard books, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy 
and Shelley's poems were, I think, those I oftenest saw 
him take up ; but it was by his rare acquaintance with 



8 CHARLES ISAAC ELTON 

the less generally well-known periods of history and of 
literature that he kept constantly astonishing even his 
most intimate friends. He had a genius, we used to 
say, for prying into nooks and corners, and that love of 
leaving the beaten track and exploring for himself, 
which afterwards made him, as a lawyer, specially 
erudite in curious and out-of-the-way branches of the 
law, displayed itself early. Whether he was ever a 
great historian in the common sense I am not sure, but 
he could describe delightfully the periods which par- 
ticularly took his fancy. He cared little for registering 
facts about them, but he imbibed their spirit, and his 
powerful, pictorial imagination revelled in making 
them alive again. All ballad-literature had a peculiar 
charm for him, and to him was rich in instruction in 
regard to the peoples among whom it had grown up. 
But even the lightest literature of the day did not 
escape his notice, and he had a broad and human 
tolerance of rubbish. Literally, he devoured books by 
the roomful. Once, when he was laid up by a tooth- 
ache, I remember his asking me to bring him ' some 
novels.' I brought him a three-volume novel from the 
library. 'What's that?' said he, pointing contemp- 
tuously at the three fat volumes. ' I shall have finished 
that thing before you can turn round. Tell them to send 
me the full of a hand-truck.' And though he ran so 
rapidly through what he read, he seldom missed a point 
in it. In an examination undergone by him (I think it 
was for a ' Jenkyns' Exhibition,' won by the present 
master of Balliol, Dr. Caird), the subject for the English 
essay was (in effect — I am not sure of the precise 
wording), 'Nationality as a basis of political division.' 
Elton wrote an essay which so exacting a critic as the 
late Archdeacon Edwin Palmer pronounced to me 
' excellent — a complete synopsis of the way the whole 
thing would work out.' Repeating this compliment to 
Elton, I remarked that I did not know he had ever 



HIS SENSE OF HUMOUR 9 

given a thought to the subject or had read a line upon 
it. 'Neither had I,' said he, 'till a few nights ago, 
at the Union, I chanced to run my eyes over some 
magazine articles, of which two or three bore straight 
on this subject. They were rather good, and I think I 
got all the plums out of them into my essay — along 
with a little make-believe padding of my own. Fancy 
my having taken in the Dons so !' The 'Dons' he 
had ' taken in ' were the Fellows of Balliol, as compe- 
tent examiners as could be found. Elton might be 
trusted to pick the plums out of whatever he glanced 
over. He was the most keen-eyed and unerring of 
critics,' and any ' padding ' put in by him was sure to 
consist of acute and interesting observations, only 
' make-believe ' in the sense that, very possibly, they 
left an impression of a more thorough and painstaking 
mastery of the subject than he had really acquired, 
a trick of style few writers would not covet. 

"Socially, Elton did not aim in youth at a very large 
acquaintance, but he was distinctly popular in his own 
set. To be so widely known and such a general favour- 
ite as he was subsequently in London, and especially 
in the House of Commons, would not have seemed 
to be in store for him. His manner was quieter 
and more subdued than it afterwards became, and he 
was as little given to laughter as Mr. Disraeli himself. 
But he had in full measure that quality which I 
suppose is, among the young, the most attractive of 
all — sense of humour. Indeed, I think he had it in the 
most ' all-round ' form I ever met it. No kind of joke 
was lost upon him, and, among those who knew him 
well, I am by no means alone in thinking that he had 
a singular power of estimating at their right values 
all the manifold varieties of wit and of humour. 

"And one other quality I think he also showed in 
the most ' all-round ' form I have met it— courage. In 
regard to this quality boys gauge each other with an 



lo CHARLES ISAAC ELTON 

exactness unattainable in the more artificial later life, 
and, having been able to apply their tests to Elton, I 
confidently pronounce his to have been as fearless a 
nature as I have known. I do not of course refer merely 
to the courage which faces personal danger. In that I 
believe Elton to have abounded ; but he was strangely 
free, too, from the subtler timidities, which, making 
men shrink from risk of incurring ridicule or of being 
convicted of wrong judgment, frighten them into self- 
suppressions and pretences. Elton always dared to be 
himself. I never knew him afraid of anybody or of 
anything. 

''Of Elton's maturer years and the more serious work 
of his life it will be for another and abler pen to render 
account. It has been my privilege to be allowed to 
record these few memories of the youth of one who, for 
nearly half a century, was, perhaps, my most intimate 
friend. And certainly I had full opportunity not only of 
observing Elton's own early years, but of comparing 
him, during them, with others, who have since been 
tried by the world and have not been found wanting. 
In Elton's class at Cheltenham College were Mr. John 
Morley and Dr. Henry Jackson of Cambridge. Con- 
temporary with him at Balliol were, among those now 
gone from us, leaving great reputations, Lord Bowen, 
Mr. T. H. Green and Sir Henry Jenkyns, and very many 
men, still living, who have attained the highest and most 
varied distinctions. Indeed, I doubt whether even Balliol 
ever saw a generation more remarkable than Elton's. To 
it belonged one living poet, who has written most finely ; 
it has given eminent judges to the Bench ; at the head 
of several Oxford Colleges, and of our two greatest 
public schools, are members of it ; in both branches of 
the Legislature it has achieved distinction, and among 
the officers of Parliament it can claim a curiously large 
number of the most prominent. In the Civil Service 
it has made its mark, and even in the Army, although 



LITERARY WORK ii 

it sent but some half-dozen recruits, it has scored a 
signal success with almost every one of them. Well, as 
I look back over all these men with the critical insight 
which comes of experience, it is easy to see how, in the 
practical qualities leading to fame and fortune, the tricks 
of manner which win the world and the steady un- 
swerving pursuit of single objects which attains them, 
this and that man may have excelled the man of whom 
I write ; but, among them all, I do not really think 
there was anyone of richer and rarer intellectual powers, 
of talents more brilliant and various and original, or of 
more interesting character and personality, than Charles 
Elton." 

I cannot hope to add to Mr. White's account any- 
thing of equal interest. It was plain to all who knew 
Mr. Elton well that he had one attribute of genius, 
the power of doing well, rapidly, and en se jouant (as 
gentle King Jamie said of himself), whatever he under- 
took. 

What he undertook, after his college days, was not 
often poetical, though he published some charming 
verses in Once a Week, at that time adorned by the 
genius of the great artists, Millais, Charles Keene, 
Frederick Walker, Sandys, Leech, with one little re- 
membered, but well worth remembering, M. J. Lawless, 
and of George du Maurier. A serial, to which Charles 
Reade and Mr. George Meredith contributed novels, 
and' Mr. Swinburne a remarkable tale of the Armagnac 
wars, gave hospitality to Mr. Elton's verse. But his 
main literary interest was in the borderland of history, 
archaeology, law, and the study of institutions. 
Though he did everything easily, he did nothing in- 
dolently, and I remember how often he sometimes 
rewrote passages in his valuable Origins of English 
History, throwing away page after page of manuscript, 
till he had satisfied himself. In his humour, his good- 



12 CHARLES ISAAC ELTON 

ness of heart, his large facility, and wealth of out-of- 
the-way lore, he somewhat reminded one of Dr. John- 
son. A fragment of his Oxford career may be recalled. 
When he won his fellowship at Queen's College, in 
1862, among the competitors was Mr. John Addington 
Symonds. 

In 1863 he married Miss Mary Augusta Strachey, 
his fellow-worker in literature and in the collection of 
books and of works of art. In 1864, after a tour in 
Norway, he published Norway, the Road and the Fell. 
He was called to the Bar in Michaelmas Term, 1865, 
and at once adopted the line in which he was pre- 
eminent, the study of early English land laws and 
institutions. Of this work the first-fruits was The 
Tenures of Kent (1867). But before the publication 
of this book, Mr. Elton's love of hunting in the dusty 
corners of history, and his loyalty to his friends, had 
led him to a discovery of practical moment. His old 
friend, Mr. Jowett, of Balliol, was then Regius Professor 
of Greek, on a salary of £4.0 a year. Christ Church, it 
was believed, owned the lands in Worcestershire, which 
were burdened by the salary of the Chair. But this 
burden appears to have been a point rather of tradition 
than of knowledge. Mr. E. A. Freeman had been in 
correspondence with Dean Liddell on the subject, and 
had called his attention, in a pamphlet, to the point as to 
the lands in Worcestershire. Dean Liddell, in a letter 
to The Times, challenged anyone to produce the deed 
to which Mr. Freeman had referred. For what follows 
we are indebted to a letter by Mr. Elton to Mr. Free- 
man. That historian's statement, and the Dean's 
challenge, were the points whence Mr. Elton began his 
researches. He thought that he found a flaw in the 
Dean's account of the titles of "the House" — a flaw of 
which the Dean was unconscious. The House possessed 
one deed, in which nothing was said of the lands and 
the burden on them. But the tradition as to the 



HIS HAPPY DISCOVERY 13 

burden was mentioned in Wedmore's History. Wed- 
more knew, vaguely, of another deed. No trace or 
memory of it was discovered by Mr. Elton at the British 
Museum. At the Record Office the authorities were 
sceptical. There was only the first deed, already 
familiar to Christ Church. Mr. Elton persevered. If 
the second deed of Wedmore's tradition could be found, 
there was money provided for a suit in Chancery. 
Assisted by Dr. Brewer, the eminent historian of 
Henry VIII., Mr. Elton continued to pursue the chase, 
and at last was rewarded by the discovery of a roll 
which was to the purpose, a roll of which, apparently, 
no copy existed anywhere. The roll attested the burden 
on the lands for the Regius Professorship held by Mr. 
Jowett. By Dean Stanley's desire, Mr. Elton com- 
municated his discovery to The Times, and Christ 
Church fulfilled Dean Liddell's promise, and paid the 
salary to Mr. Jowett. 

Mr. Elton must have greatly enjoyed a search so 
congenial, and a discovery which so happily ended a 
disagreeable controversy. But I cannot remember 
having heard him allude to his triumphant pursuit of 
the missing roll. The delights of research in manu- 
script are poignant, but are known to few. Mr. Elton 
never wearied of them at a period when seekers were 
even more rare, and when the dark corners of history 
were less frequently explored than they are at present. 
" Most men," said a Saturday reviewer (Feb. 9th, 1867) 
"would find it as terrible to be alone in a big room 
with a Disgavelling Act as to be alone in a railway 
carriage with a man who thinks he understands the 
currency." To the vulgar eye, gavelkind seems to be 
a peculiarly Kentish custom, whereby, a landowner 
dying intestate, his land is equally divided among his 
sons. ''Gavel," it seems, is really nothing but rent 
(usually in kind or in services) paid by free tenants. 
Mr. Elton proved that much land, supposed to be held 



14 CHARLES ISAAC ELTON 

in "gavelkind" (according to the popular sense of the 
term), was, in fact, not so held ; either it was not so 
held at the time of the Norman Conquest, or it has 
subsequently been *'disgavelled " by Royal Preroga- 
tive, or by Act of Parliament. Mr. Elton's work, of 
which a brief and clear account cannot here be given, 
is lucidity itself, and manifests a remarkable power of 
dealing with original records, and with complicated 
customs. Mr. Elton's practice at the Bar was mainly 
concerned with the laws of Real Property, a strange 
historical palimpsest. 

Mr. Elton's interest in his favourite themes was in- 
creased, and the spur to that dormant quality, his 
ambition, was blunted, when, in 1869, he succeeded to 
his uncle's estate of Whitestaunton, in Somerset. 
From his boyhood he had been devoid of ambition ; 
the work which he did he undertook because he liked 
it. Quite probably, had he not become the squire of 
Whitestaunton, he would have risen to the higher 
honours of his profession. But these were, to him, by 
no means a thing to be snatched at, and Whitestaunton 
made him extremely happy. The ancient house lies in 
a deep green hollow of the Somerset hills, below it are 
the fish-ponds of the old Chantry, and beneath these 
the foundations of a small Roman villa excavated by 
the squire. The estate contains a miniature history of 
Southern Britain ; neolithic implements and tools of 
bronze are occasionally found ; then comes the villa, 
with its traces of the Roman occupation, while the 
name, Whitestaunton, speaks of St. White, an early 
saint of the English conquerors of the native Celts. 
The church is dedicated to St. Andrew, and was 
ministered to, of old, by the Guild of St. Mary of 
Whitestaunton. At the Reformation the Guild was 
confiscated, and the Lady Anne Brett, who declined to 
believe in the shifting creeds of Henry VIIL, lost her 
lands, and her "fair old stone mansion." These were 



MULTIFARIOUS STUDIES 15 

later restored to her family, and remained in the hands 
of the Bretts till 1723, when they were acquired by the 
Eltons. The house had been partly remodelled in 
the Tudor times, but is essentially a very ancient 
structure, lacking nothing but a ghost to add a pleas- 
ing terror. The fish-ponds still contain large and 
highly educated trout, which have ascended from a 
burn flowing into the Yarty, ''the roaring Yarty " of 
Drayton. The scene is typically English, and an ideal 
home for an historian and archaeologist. 

The little stream, and the changes of the floods and 
frosts of centuries, have broken up the baths and hypo- 
causts and mosaic flooring of the Roman villa, which 
Mr. Elton described in a paper published by The 
Academy (September ist, 1883). Not many relics were 
found, mainly a few coins of the fourth century and 
fragments of the red " Samian " ware. Probably the 
villa was the home of a Roman official connected with 
the ironworks of the period ; and, judging from the 
amount of ashes, the house may have been burned in 
a rising of the British workers, or by the English 
conquerors. Here Mr. Elton lived a hospitable and 
learned life, and the writer has many pleasant recollec- 
tions of fishing in the Yarty and the ponds, of delving 
for undiscovered treasures in the villa, and of lawn 
tennis on the lawn. Mr. Elton was much more addicted 
to shooting than to the contemplative man's recreation, 
and was an active, nay, an indefatigable, player at 
lawn tennis. He was indeed an ideal squire of the old 
school, and in his dominions was the ''Good Tyrant" 
of Plato's dream — ^just, generous, and always accessible 
to his rural neighbours. In an obituary notice it is 
said that he had been regarded as the model of the 
squire in Mrs. Ward's Robert Elsmere — a most im- 
probable suggestion, as he did not concern himself with 
the criticism of the Book of Daniel, and was incapable 
of shaking the faith of the most innocent clergyman. 



i6 CHARLES ISAAC ELTON 

His studies were multifarious, but not in the field of 
biblical conjecture. Doubtless the best representative 
of his work is The Origins of English History^ a rich 
repository of ancient geographical lore and a valuable 
exploration of the dim hints of classical knowledge 
about our island. Perhaps not less interesting is his 
essay on Market Rights and Tolls, contributed in a 
Royal Commission of 1888. In working at the early 
history of Scotland the present writer found Mr. Elton's 
essay on Markets and Burghs invaluable, and his orally 
communicated criticism of the greatest service. He 
was, indeed, an encyclopaedia of knowledge on all 
manner of topics — classical, archaeological, biblio- 
graphical, artistic, geographical. " Reading makes 
a full man," and his reading was as wide as his 
criticism of evidence was keen. His Career of Columbus 
(1892) is full of the misty legends of " isles indiscover- 
able in the unheard-of West," while the thin vein of 
historic gold is acutely disengaged and displayed. In 
the matter of art he was fond, chiefly, of the faience 
of Rhodes, Persia, and Anatolia. A beautiful and 
varied collection decorated the large studio, converted 
into a drawing-room, of his house in Cranley Place ; 
here, too, were some of the finest of his books and 
illuminated manuscripts. The rest had no idle life on the 
shelves of his study and his library at Whitestaunton. 
The pottery is catalogued (1901), as is the library, in a 
volume dear to book collectors. His own work on great 
book collectors (1893) was undertaken in collaboration 
with Mrs. Elton. Indeed, there was none of his work 
in which she had not her part ; and it is at once im- 
possible to write about their long companionship, 
and to give any fair idea of Mr. Elton's life, without 
entering on a subject too sacred. 

Happy nations, they say, have no history, and there 
is little biography in the prosperous life of a happy 
man. Mr. Elton's politics were of no extreme com- 



IN AND OUT OF PARLIAMENT 17 

plexion. If his ideas were Liberal in early youth, and 
if in 1883 he consented to stand as Conservative candi- 
date for West Somerset, the change was only due to 
the usual effect of years. He defeated his opponent, 
Lord Kilcoursie, in February, 1884, and in March of 
that year made four '< maiden speeches" on the same 
afternoon. Punch observed humorously on this novel 
performance, but the subjects of the speeches were 
legal Bills, concerned with matters in which Mr. Elton 
was an expert. As a rule he seldom spoke, only when 
he had something useful to say, which perhaps no one 
else could have said. He was unseated by Sir Thomas 
Acland in 1885, was returned again in 1886, and re- 
tired at the General Election of 1892. For him the 
House had none of the strange fascination which it 
exercises over so many men, victory did not elate nor 
defeat depress him. He had been heard to say that 
"the Age of the Antonines" — the age of peace and 
prosperity — '' is ended," but history had taught him to 
acquiesce in the vicissitudes of national fortunes. 
When he spoke it was without nervousness, and with- 
out rhetoric, but with lucid and genial humour. His 
interests in the past, in sport, in literature, in law, and 
in the happiness of his tenants and neighbours, re- 
mained what they had ever been till his death, after a 
brief illness, caused by a chill, in April 1900. The loss 
to all who knew him in any capacity, as landlord, 
friend, or neighbour, was great ; he had not chosen 
the path of any ambition, but had modestly and effect- 
ually done his duty, and the work which he found to 
his hand. That his powers might have carried him to 
higher place is certain, but ambition is not a duty, 
and no man can be justly styled "indolent" who did 
the laborious tasks that were his pleasure, and who 
communicated the pleasure and the knowledge of 
which he was so liberal. If he "warmed both hands 
at the fire of life," he diffused the radiance and the 



i8 CHARLES ISAAC ELTON 

glow ; and is remembered as a man just, kind, genial, 
and generous would desire to be. One recalls him, 
and his friendly welcome, with his pipe among his 
books and papers, in his London study ; or on the low 
hills, and among the ancient trees of his rural home, 
one remembers the happiness afforded by his hospi- 
tality, his wisdom, and his wit, his fragments of for- 
gotten lore ; for to him, as to Tom Hearne, the Oxford 
antiquary. Time might have said, "Whatever I forget 
you learn." 

Of his Shakespearean studies, this is not the place 
for criticism ; but the book seems likely to be the most 
widely appreciated of his works. For once his erudi- 
tion and acuteness are expended on a theme which does, 
not interest special students alone, but all lovers of 
English literature. 

I ANDREW LANG 

January, 1904 




FACTS AND TRADITIONS RELATING 
TO SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 



FACTS AND TRADITIONS RELATING 
TO SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 

I 

WHEN Oldys began annotating his '^ Langbaine," 
very little was known of the Stratford records, 
which are now so familiar to the world. Hardly any- 
thing had been done towards distinguishing the several 
William Shakespeares and Anne Hathaways who 
appear in the local documents, or to separate the history 
of the poet's parents from that of the shoemaker, John 
Shakespeare, and his wives. We will give an example 
of the prevailing confusion of thought from a bio- 
graphical notice of the poet written by John Britton, 
F.S.A., early in the present century,^ observing that the 
John Shakespeares in question are treated as one person, 
married in due turns to all the Mrs. Shakespeares in 
the register. Here, says the antiquary, some doubts 
arise ; for if the father of William Shakespeare married 
a third wife, that ceremony must have occurred within 
seven months after the decease of the second ; and when 
he applied for the grant of the Arden arms, he is stated 
in the register to have had those children by the third 
wife ; yet these children are not alluded to by the College 

1 Remarks on the Life and Writings of William Shakespeare in Whit- 
tingham's edition of the plays, 1814; revised and enlarged, i8i8. 



22 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 

record, nor does it contain any reference to a second or 
third marriage. We here see the real origin of Better- 
ton's account of the '' woolstapler with ten children," 
which Oldys copied in his early note. 

There was also a great dispute as to the exact date of 
Shakespeare's birth, and consequently of his age when 
he died. Langbaine, whose book was printed in 1691, 
took a copy of the Stratford epitaph from Dugdale's 
Antiquities of Warwickshire to the effect that the poet 
died on the 23rd of April, "in the year of our Lord 
1616, and of his age fifty-three." Both Langbaine and 
Oldys took this as meaning that he was fifty-three years 
of age ; whereas, if they had seen the baptismal 
certificate, they would have known that he had just 
completed the fifty-second, and was beginning the fifty- 
third year of his age. The effect was to antedate his 
birth by a twelvemonth. The words of Oldys are taken 
with little alteration from Rowe and Betterton ; and in 
describing the poet he says: "The son of Mr. John 
Shakespeare, woolstapler ; was the eldest of ten children, 
born 23 of April, 1563 ; was brought up in his youth 
to his father's business," etc. Opposite to the " Aet. 53 " 
in the text he wrote the words, "Consequently born 
in 1563." On this, however, Malone remarked : "He 
was born in 1564. This inscription led Oldys into 
the mistake. He died on his birthday and had exactly 
closed his fifty-second year." Mr. Bolton Corney> 
showed in an essay on the assumed birthday of Shake- 
speare, that Malone was entirely depending on Joseph 
Greene, the master of the free school at Stratford from 
1735 to 1 77 1, and afterwards Vicar of Welford. Mr. 
Greene, a sufficiently learned man, took an extract from 
the baptismal register, stating that William, son of 
John Shakespeare, was baptised the 26th of April, 1564, 
and added in his own handwriting that the birth was 
on the 23rd. " He was born three days before," says 
Malone ; "I have said this on the faith of Mr. Greene, 



HIS BIRTHDAY 23 

who I find made the extract from the register which Mr. 
West gave to Mr. Steevens ; but qu^re, how did Mr. 
Greene ascertain this fact ? " ^ 

It has often been said that there was a practice in 
those days of christening infants three days after birth ; 
and Mr. Knight even maintained that infancy was 
surrounded with such perils, when medical science was 
imperfect, that we might well believe in Shakespeare's 
first seeing the light ''only a day or two previous to 
this legal record of his existence, "^ There are probably 
as many exceptions as examples to be found of this 
rule, if it ever existed. It was occasionally of great 
importance that a child should be christened without 
delay.^ But in the absence of special circumstances, we 
should go by the rule in the Prayer-book. Parents are 
now admonished to bring the child to church on the 
first or second Sunday after its birth, or some other 
holy-day falling between, unless there is grave cause to 
the contrary. This rule, though hard of enforcement 
in our rigorous climate, is less severe than that which 
prevailed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The 
admonition of the Prayer-book of 1559 was that 
baptism should not be deferred any longer than the 
Sunday or other holy-day next after the birth, "unlesse 
upon a great and reasonable cause, to be declared 
to the Curate, and by hym approved." Let us apply 
this doctrine to Shakespeare's case. Taking the 

1 See Malone, Shakespeare, ed. Boswell, 1821, ii, 610; also Bolton 
Corney, An Argument on the assumed Birthday of Shakspere reduced to 
shape, A.D. 1864, pp. 16. 

2 Charles Knight, William Shakspere, a Biography, 1843, p. 26. 

5 A husband's rights, for instance, over his wife's land depended in 
some districts on the fact that issue was born alive. There is an ancient 
inquisition about lands at Boughton-Aluph, in Kent, set forth in the 
Calendarium Genealogictim (ed. C. Roberts, 1865, ii. 469; 21 Edw. I.), 
where the jury found " that one Joanna de Laverton bore a daughter at 
dawn on the day of her death, which daughter the rector baptised at 
the daybreak, alive and crying, and she lived from the time of her birth 
unti sunrise of the same day, when she died,' 



24 



SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 



ordinary tables for finding Easter, we see that Easter 
Sunday fell on April 9th, in the Julian year 1564, 
or 1564-5 old style. The next holy-day is Wednesday, 
April 19th, the festival of Archbishop Alphege. The 
next is Sunday, April 23rd, St. George's Day ; the next 
again is Tuesday, April 25th, St. Mark's Day ; and 
there are no other festivals during the rest of the 
month. The following table will show the state of the 
calendar. 



April, 1 564, Julian; 1564-5, English. Golden Number, 7. Sunday Letter, BA. 


Day. 
16 


Letter. 


Week- 
day. 


Festivals, 


A 


Sun. 


First Sunday after Easter. (Low Sunday.) 


17 


b 


Mon. 




18 


c 


Tues. 




19 


d 


Wed. 


Alphege, Archbishop and Martyr. 


20 


e 


Thurs. 




21 


f 


Fri. 




22 


g 


Sat. 


Inventio Sti Dionysii. 


23 


A 


Sun. 


Second Sunday after Easter. St. George, Martyr. 


24 


b 


Mon. 


St. Mark's Eve. 


25 


c 


Tues. 


St. Mark, Evangelist. (Black Crosses.) 


26 


d 


Wed. 


Morrow of St. Mark. (Baptism of Shakespeare.) 


27 


e 


Thurs. 




28 


f 


Fri. 


Vitalis, Martyr. 


29 


g 


Sat. 




30 


A 


Sun. 


Third Sunday after Easter. Erkenwald, Bp. 



The christening would actually have taken place on 
the Sunday, St. George's Day, if the child were born 
on any day between the i6th and 20th inclusive. If 
the birth was on the Friday or Saturday, the strict 
letter of the rule would fix the baptism for St. Mark's 
Day ; but who would have chosen for such a purpose 
the day of the ''Great Litany," when all the crosses 
and altars used to be draped in black, the festival itself 
being commonly known as " Black Crosses "? It may 
be said that these observances had been abolished at 
the Reformation ; but we should answer that it was 
only six years since Protestantism had been re-estab- 



HIS BIRTHDAY 25 

lished, that Mary Shakespeare herself was almost 
certainly a Roman Catholic during the period from 
1553 to 1558, and that her father, Robert Arden, 
showed the sincerity of his own belief by the bequest 
of his soul to God ''and to our blessed Lady, Saint 
Mary, and to all the holy company of heaven."^ But 
as a matter of fact, any history of the Calendar will 
show that St. Mark's Day continued to be "prolific in 
superstitions " long after the Reformation was com- 
plete. Brand collected a vast quantity of folk-lore 
about the ghostly company of those who were to die 
within the year walking through the churchyard as 
soon as that fatal day began. ^ Hampson made a 
similar collection in his account of the Medieval 
Calendar. 3 Pennant said that in North Wales no 
farmer would "hold his team" on that day, for fear 
of losing one of the oxen. " In the year of our Lord 
1589," says Vaughan in his Golden Grove, "I being 
as then but a boy, do remember that an ale-wife, 
making no exception of days, would needs brew upon 
St. Mark's days ; but lo, the marvellous work of God ! 
while she was thus labouring, the top of the chimney 
took fire, and, before it could be quenched, her house 
was quite burnt. Surely, a gentle warning to them that 
violate and profane forbidden days ! " The same ob- 
jection, of course, would have applied if the boy were 
born on St. George's Day, with the additional grave 
cause for postponement of the baptism, that there was 
only one clear day between the Sunday and the un- 
lucky or forbidden festival. The result is that we are 
left in some uncertainty ; but it seems clear, at least, 
that Shakespeare was born either on Friday, April 
2ist, 1564, or on the Saturday or Sunday following. 

1 See copy of will in Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 53. 

2 Brand, Popular Antiquities, ed. Sir H. Ellis, i. 192-6 ; where the 
references to Pennant and Vaughan will likewise be found. 

•^ Hampson, Medii ^vi Kaletidarium, i. 219-25. 



26 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 



II 

The first great event in Shakespeare's Hfe was his 
marriage, which (as it must be presumed) was solemn- 
ised in the year 1582. The place of marriage is 
unknown. The Christian name of his wife and her 
age — more than seven years in advance of his own — are 
known only by the inscription on her tomb. That her 
surname was Hathway or Hathaway is inferred from 
a vague phrase or two in her granddaughter's will. 
But the early biographers all agreed that Anne 
Shakespeare was the daughter of one Hathaway, a sub- 
stantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford ; and 
the original statement is supported by the evidence 
which has been since collected. The only dispute 
remaining open is whether she belonged to the Hatha- 
ways of Stratford, or to those whose home was in the 
adjoining parish of Weston, on the left side of the 
Avon. 

Malone at one time thought that she was that Anne 
Hathaway of Shottery who had married William 
Wilson in 1580,^ but soon found the idea was erroneous. 
The coincidence between the names continued, never- 
theless, to be the source of mistakes. Mr. Greene 
" imagined that our poet's wife was of Shottery " ; and 
he was induced to this belief, as Malone supposed, by 
finding notices in the register about '' Richard Hatha- 
way, otherwise Gardner, of Shottery " and his descend- 
ants. If he had looked nearer home, he would have 
found Hathaways in Luddington or Weston-on-Avon, 
both almost within sight of his vicarage. Mr. Greene 
jumped to the conclusion that the "cottage," or farm- 
house, in Shottery belonging to the Misses Tyler, and 
before them to an old Mr. Quiney, might have been 

1 Stratford marriage register, 1579-80, in Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., ii, 
187 ; see Malone's Shakespeare, u.s., ii. 113, note 7. 



ANNE HATHAWAY 27 

settled on Judith Shakespeare as part of her mother's 
property upon her marriage with Tom Quiney ; all 
which , things were easily disproved, but soon took 
a new lease of life among the roots of the local 
traditions.^ 

At one time Malone thought that Anne Hathaway 
was the child of the other Richard Hathaway, of 
Shottery, though the evidence was necessarily defi- 
cient. ''There is no entry of her baptism, the register 
not commencing till 1558, two years after she was 
born." He came round, however, to the opinion that 
she was not of Shottery at all, but of the family that 
held lands in Luddington, one of the Stratford hamlets, 
and owned a small freehold patrimony in the adjoining 
parish of Weston, across the Gloucestershire boundary. 
There were persons of the name of Hathaway farming 
Sir John Conway's lands at Luddington in the reign 
of Elizabeth, and the name continued upon the estate 
rolls till about the year 1775. Here then, says Malone, 
as a final decision, it is not improbable that Shakespeare 
found his wife. The suggestion has been improved 
by "a so-called tradition" that their marriage took 
place at Luddington, for which there is no evidence 
of any kind. And Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps^ was of 
opinion that the notion of Anne's residence at Ludding- 
ton should be summarily dismissed. There can be no 
doubt, however, that she came from a yeoman's family 
at Weston ; and whether her family held a farmhouse 
on Sir John Conway's property across the river or not 
is a matter of very little importance. 

Great efforts have been made to connect her with the 
last-mentioned Richard Hathaway of Shottery. Mr. 
Halliwell-Phillipps quotes an unpublished version of 
Rowe's Life of Shakespeare {ante 1766), now in the 

^ See quotations from Greene's unpublished version of Rowe's bio- 
graphy, in Halliwell-Phillipps, id., 189-90. 
•^ Id., 183. 



28 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 

British Museum, for the statement that her father's 
name was John, and says that Jordan described her as 
"a daughter of Samuel Hathaway."^ It is not likely, 
he adds, that there was any satisfactory evidence in 
favour of either of these "nominal ascriptions," and 
we shall find the same remark applicable to the case of 
the various Hathaways of Shottery. 

Richard Hathaway's wilP contained a legacy to his 
daughter Agnes, besides a gift to another Agnes, 
daughter of Thomas Hathaway, whose relationship to 
the testator is unknown. It is pointed out, moreover, 
that Anne Hathaway was a common name in Shottery ; 
a person of that name was married, as we have seen, to 
William Wilson ; and Bartholomew, Richard Hatha- 
way's eldest son, had a daughter Anne, who married 
Richard Edwardes. The poet's wife, said Malone, 
might have been Bartholomew's sister, though he did 
not mention her in his will ; but the suggestion was 
admitted to be improbable. 

It has been surmised that she was the same person 
as Richard Hathaway's daughter Agnes, for whom a 
marriage portion was provided by his will. That 
would account, it is said, for her father's friend taking 
part in the application for a licence before her marriage, 
for his using a seal with Richard Hathaway's initials 
upon the same occasion, and for her acquaintance with 
Hathaway's shepherd, Thomas Whittington, who said 
in his will (i6oi)that Mrs. Shakespeare owed him forty 
shillings.^ But these are only subsidiary details. The 
point to be proved is that Agnes and Anne were used 
as two forms of one name. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps* 

1 Id., 1 86. 

^ Printed in Halliwell-Phillipps, id., 195-6, with other extracts from 
wills and reg^isters relating to the Hathaway families. 

^ Halliwell-Phillipps, id., 186, note 10. See also Richard Hathaway's 
will, "Item, I owe unto Thomas Whitting-ton, my sheepherd, fower 
poundes sixe shillinges eight pence." 

* Id., 184-S, note 5. 



HIS MARRIAGE 29 

thought they were "sometimes convertible." He 
shows that the pet name Annice (Annys, Annes) was 
used for both without much distinction ; that the person 
called "Agnes, daughter of Thomas Hathaway" in 
the yeoman's will is named Anne in the parish register; 
and that Philip Henslowe spoke of his wife as Agnes 
in his will, but that she appeared as Anne in the Dul- 
wich register, and also in the inscription on her tomb- 
stone. 

The names in reality appear to be quite distinct. 
Agnes, or Agneta, was one of the earliest English 
names ; it was used in honour of the saint whose 
martyrdom and "second appearance" were com- 
memorated on the 2ist of January and the octave 
following. The other name was not much in use 
before the Reformation. It is supposed to refer, not 
to the festival of July 26th, but to an Eastern saint 
very little known here till the arrival of Queen Anne 
of Bohemia. Mr. Chandler noticed, in his edition of 
the Cressingham Court-rolls, that Alice, Agnes, and 
Margaret were anciently the favourite names for 
women. Agnes occurs fourteen times in the rolls, 
and Alice sixteen times, but there is only one Anne 
in the whole series. Moreover, the subject of "mis- 
nomer" was so important in our early law that it is 
easy to bring together authorities on the point. There 
are several relevant cases in the Year-Books and Abridg- 
ments. As early as the thirty-third of Henry VI. it was 
decided that Anne and Agnes are distinct baptismal 
names and not convertible, so that if an action was 
brought against John and his wife Agnes, and the 
wife's name was Anne, the variance was essential and 
could not be amended. Two other cases are reported 
by Croke. In King v. King, decided in the forty-second 
Elizabeth, the Court resolved that Agnes and Anne 
are several names, and that a mistake between them 
could not be amended after a verdict. In Griffith v. 



30 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 

Sir Hugh Middleton, in the fifteenth year of James L, 
the Chief Justice said that '^ Joan and Jane are both 
one name, but Agnes and Anne, Gillian and Julian, 
are different."^ 

The suggestion may therefore be dismissed that the 
poet married, under the name of Anne, an Agnes 
Hathaway of Shottery. It would, indeed, have been 
somewhat difficult to prove that his wife was a Hath- 
away at all, if it were not for the bond relating to 
their marriage which Sir Thomas Phillipps found at 
Worcester, and for the recognition by Lady Barnard 
of the Weston Hathaways as her kinsfolk. There is, 
we may say, no reasonable doubt that Anne belonged 
to a Gloucestershire family, but whether she was 
remotely connected with the great Gloucestershire 
Hathaways is a very different question. There are 
many records showing that the Hathaways were im- 
portant people in the Forest of Dean from the twelfth 
to the fourteenth century. A William Hathaway held 
a manor in Lydney in the tenth year of Henry II. The 
Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester in 1221 show that 
Gilbert Hathaway and others beat and maimed a certain 
Hugo Chark, who was probably a disturber of the 
Forest. A William Hathaway was one of the two 
owners of the parish of Ruardean in the reign of 
Edward I. A Ralf Hathaway owned the manor 
of Hathaways at Minsterworth in the next reign. 
Another Hathaway was appointed Keeper of the 
Forest ; and several instances of the same kind might 
be added. 

But when we consider that nothing was heard of this 
family in later times, and that the Forest of Dean was at 
the other end of the county, we must admit that there 
is at present no means of connecting them with the 
family at Weston-on-Avon. It should also be re- 
membered that Weston is close to Stratford, and 

^ Croke's Reports, ed. Leach, 1790-2, i. 776 ; ii. 425. 



HIS MARRIAGE 31 

therefore not far from the old Heath-way, which, as we 
suspect, gave a surname to the various Hathaways in 
that neighbourhood. 

The questions raised about the licence and bond 
relating to the poet's marriage are interesting in them- 
selves ; but it must be remembered that they do not 
relate to the time at which the marriage was contracted, 
but only to a detail of the ceremony at which it was 
solemnised. 

We may say at once that there is no reason to 
suppose that Shakespeare and his wife had made 
an irregular or clandestine marriage, though they 
appear to have been united by a civil marriage con- 
tract some time before the ceremony was performed in 
face of the Church. We should distinguish between 
regular and irregular contracts. A contract of future 
espousals was regular, but it did not amount to marriage, 
being nothing more in reality than a mutual covenant 
to be married at a future time. A contract of present 
espousals, on the contrary, was a legal marriage. The 
man said, "I take thee for my wife," and the woman 
answered, "I take thee for my husband," or to that 
effect, before witnesses, and with the gift of a ring or 
some other symbolical object. A contract of this kind 
might legally be made by a boy over fourteen or a girl 
over twelve ; but it was provided by the looth canon that 
infants under twenty-one required the express consent 
of their parents and guardians. As Shakespeare was 
only eighteen years old, though his bride was twenty- 
six, it follows that John Shakespeare's consent was 
obtained. The congregation was frequently warned 
that such civil marriages ought to be contracted 
publicly, and before several witnesses. If these rules 
were broken, the offenders were liable to the punish- 
ments for clandestine marriage, such as fine, im- 
prisonment, or excommunication ; and the victim 
might be condemned to walk, like the Duchess of 



32 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 

Gloucester, in a white sheet, with bare feet and a 
taper alight : — 

'* Metbinks I should not thus be led along", 
Mail'd up in shame, with papers on my back ; 
And follow'd with a rabble that rejoice 
To see my tears and hear my deep-fet groans." ^ 

The civil marriage required the religious solemnity to 
give the parties their legal status as to property ; but 
otherwise it was both valid and regular. The clandes- 
tine marriage was valid, but all parties could be 
punished for their offence against the law. It was of 
that kind which has been made familiar to us by the 
Fleet Street registers. A bankrupt parson who dreaded 
no fine or fall, or some irregular practitioner like Sir 
Oliver Martext, would unite a couple of runaways, 
"as they join wainscot."- "Thou saw'st them 
married?" asks the Host in Jonson's play of the 
New Inn.^ "I do think I did, and heard the words, 
/ Philip, take thee Lettice . . . and heard the priest 
do his part." " Where were they married ? " " In the 
new stable. ..." " Had they a licence?" "Licence 
of love, I saw no other." 

It may be asked why marriages were not always 
solemnised in church after banns published or special 
licence obtained. "Get you to church," said Jaques, 
"and have a good priest that can tell you what mar- 
riage is."^ The answer is that it was difficult to get 
married, especially with due publication of banns, 
except in the latter half of the year, between Trinity 
and Advent. The ancient prohibitions had been 
relaxed by the Council of Trent ; but the decrees of 
that assembly were not accepted in England. In our 
own country the ancient rules prevailed. The banns 
could not be published, nor marriages solemnised, 

1 2 Henry VI. , ii. 4, 30-3. - As You Like It, iii. 3, 88. 

^ Act v., scene i. ^ As You Like It, u.s,, 86-7. 



LAWFUL TIMES OF MARRIAGE 33 

although they might certainly be legally contracted, 
during any of the periods of prohibition, unless, indeed, 
a special licence were obtained. The periods extended 
from Advent to the Octave of the Epiphany, or January 
the 13th, exclusive ; from Septuagesima to the end of 
Easter Week ; and from the first Rogation Day, three 
days before the Feast of the Ascension, to Trinity 
Sunday, inclusive. These restrictions are described 
in certain old Latin verses, which are thus translated 
in the Termes de la Ley : — 

"Advent all marriage forbids, 
Hilary's feast to nuptials tends, 
And Septuagint no wedding rids, 
Yet Easter's Octaves that amends. 
Rogation hinders hasty loves. 
But Trinity that let removes,"^ 

" It is also certain," says Burn, ''that a distinction of 
times hath been observed as the law of our Reformed 
Church, not only from the clause in several licences 
which we may observe in our books, Quocunque anni 
tempore, but also from a remarkable dispute which 
happened in Archbishop Parker's time between the 
Master of the Faculties and the Vicar-General, whether 
the first only, or the second in conjunction with him, 
had a right to grant licences on that particular head. 
And after that, in Archbishop Whitgift's table of fees, 
there is first a fee for a licence to solemnise matrimony 
•without bamis, and afterwards a fee for a licence to 
solemnise matrimony in the time of prohibition ofhanns 
to be published." Several attempts were made to 
remove these disabilities, both in Parliament and in 
Convocation. In the seventeenth of Elizabeth a Bill 
was introduced to declare marriages after banns to be 
lawful at all times of the year, with the exception of 
nine days specially mentioned. In the Convocation of 

^ Les Termes de la Ley (by J. Rastell), 1641, pp. 13, 14, s,v. Advent, 
D 



34 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 

1575) the Queen rejected an article proposing that 
marriages might be solemnised on any day in the 
year; "but these distinctions, being invented only at 
first as a fund (among many others) for dispensations, 
and being built upon no rational foundation, nor upon 
any law of the Church of England, have vanished of 
themselves."^ 

These dispensations were of different kinds. In 
some cases the publication of banns was required once 
and no more ; in others, one of the three publications 
was forborne ; and there were faculties, or licences, 
"expressly requiring all the three publications, and 
dispensing only with time or place." Instances of all 
these kinds, we are told, are very common in our 
ecclesiastical records, especially before the Reformation. 

On Thursday, the 28th of November, 1582, William 
Shakespeare went to the Bishop's Registry at Wor- 
cester with his two friends, Fulk Sandells and John 
Richardson, the two farmers from Shottery, and ob- 
tained a licence to be married to Anne Hathaway with 
only one publication of banns. Advent Sunday fell 
on December ist, so that there was only just time 
to get the banns called on the last day of November — 
St. Andrew's Day. Even then, however, in the absence 
of another dispensation, the wedding in church could 
not take place until the 13th of January, being the 
Octave of the Epiphany, when the period of prohibi- 
tion came to an end. 

There has been some discussion of an entry made in 
the book on the preceding day. There is a minute as 
to an application for a marriage licence "for William 
Shakespeare and Anne Whately of Temple Grafton in 
the County of Warwick." The licence to dispense with 

1 Burn, Ecclesiastical Law, 9th ed., ii. 467-8. The words, "It is 
also certain . , . head," are quoted by Burn from Gibson's Codex, 430. 
The prohibited times are g-iven by Lyndwood (see Gibson's Codex, u.s., 
and Ayliffe's Parergon, 364). 



HIS MARRIAGE-LICENCE 35 

banns was given in favour of ''William Shakespeare 
and Anne Hathaway of Stratford." Temple Grafton is 
not one of the hamlets of Stratford. There is a curious 
coincidence in the name ; but we cannot attach much 
importance to it when we find that the objects of the 
application were quite different, not to mention the 
differences in the surnames and residences of the two 
intended brides. 

Anne Hathaway was not present when the application 
was made. This involved the necessity of proof that 
she had no parents living, and was beyond the age of 
wardship. We know that it was not very easy to prove 
her age, owing to the neglect in keeping a parochial 
register ; and it is probable that there were no certifi- 
cates produced to prove that her parents were dead, 
especially if they had died at Weston, in another 
diocese. Time, however, was very pressing, and an 
expedient was devised to meet the difficulty. The bond 
of indemnity was drawn in a somewhat unusual form — 
with a condition that Anne Hathaway should not be 
married "without the consent of her friends." 

It was necessary under the circumstances that the 
intended bridegroom should attend the office in person. 
On being presented to the Ordinary, a lawyer exercising 
the Bishop's jurisdiction at the Registry, he had to state 
his age and to show, as a minor, that he was furnished 
with his father's consent. One of the two friends 
would doubtless produce a letter or document bearing 
John Shakespeare's signature or attested mark. Then 
William Shakespeare had to testify on oath that to the 
best of his knowledge and belief there was no impedi- 
ment by way of precontract, kindred, or alliance, or 
by reason of any suit in the Ecclesiastical Court, and, 
in short, that he knew of no lawful cause why the 
licence should not be given. In the next place formal 
proof had to be offered that the parties were ''of good 
estate and quality " ; a point as to which no question 



36 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 

was likely to arise. The bonds-men being ready to give 
security in the usual way, the licence was accordingly 
granted, permitting the parties to be married ''with 
once asking of the banns of matrimony between them," 
subject, of course, to the ordinary rules as to marrying 
in the canonical hours and in the church or chapel of 
the place where one of the parties was in residence. 
The bond was executed in favour of Mr. Richard Cosin, 
a lawyer of Worcester, and Mr. Robert Warmstry, 
notary, and principal Registrar for the diocese, an 
office which was long hereditary in his family. The 
instrument was drawn up according to the precise 
directions provided by the Canon Law. The date was 
the 28th of November, in the twenty-fifth year of 
Elizabeth, the regnal year having commenced on the 
17th of November, 1582. Fulk Sandells and John 
Richardson bound themselves in the sum of £^0, the 
obligation to be void if there was no impediment of 
the kind mentioned, if Anne obtained the consent of 
her friends, and if William Shakespeare duly indemni- 
fied the Lord Bishop of Worcester, John Whitgift, 
"for licensing them to be married together with once 
asking of the banns of matrimony between them." 

We do not know where the marriage took place. If 
it had been at Stratford, it would have been entered in 
the paper book then used as a register, and would have 
been copied into the existing parchment book, besides 
being recorded in the transcripts from time to time 
forwarded 'to Worcester. As Shakespeare's place of 
residence is not mentioned in the bond, it is possible 
that he was living for the time at Weston, or some other 
place in the neighbourhood. The wedding ceremony 
may have been actually performed at Weston ; but there 
are no registers of that parish for the date in question, 
and no transcripts for the same period have as yet been 
discovered at Gloucester. There is no doubt, however, 
that the ceremony was fully performed in accordance 



ANNE SHAKESPEARE 37 

with the episcopal authority. Malone had an idea that 
Shakespeare was married at Billesley ; but this seems 
to be a mere conjecture, based on the fact that Elizabeth, 
the poet's grandchild, chose Billesley as the place for 
her second marriage. The world was all before her ; 
and yet she went for no apparent reason, but doubtless 
led by sentiment or affection, to the obscure little 
church.^ But at Billesley, as at Weston, the early 
registers are lost; and, unless transcripts be found, any 
further discussion of the question will be unprofitable. 

We know nothing about the appearance of Anne 
Shakespeare, though it might be possible to show what 
she was not like by comparing various passages in the 
plays and sonnets. We may be sure that she was not 
of the complexion despised in poor Phebe, that she had 
not those " inky brows," that " black silk hair," or the 
"bugle eyeballs" of Robin Redbreast. 2 There are, 
of course, many passages in the sonnets which would 
hardly have been circulated if Anne had been pale- 
lipped and of a dun complexion, and with "black 
wires" for curls on her head.^ Oldys thought that he 
had found out something more definite, and was con- 
vinced that Mrs. Shakespeare was lovely, cold, and 
frail. He was misled, as Malone has shown, by taking 
an incomplete view of the ninety-third sonnet, as if it 
had been an isolated statement and not part of an 
intricate series of arguments.^ He seems also to have 
been much struck with the poet's quotation from 
Edward III., as if it had been intended as an imputa- 
tion against Mrs. Shakespeare's character : — 

" For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds ; 
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. "^ 

^ See Malone, op. cit, ii. 117, 118. Billesley was about four miles 
north-west of Stratford on the Alcester road. 

^ As You Like It, iii. 5, 46, 47. ^ Sonnet cxxx., 1. 4. 

* "So shall I live, supposing thou art true, 
Like a deceived husband." 

^ Sonnet xciv., 13-14. Cf. Edward III. (in "Leopold Shakespeare") 
ii. 2, 455. 



38 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 

In the next sonnet, however, it is admitted that all faults 
are hidden by "beauty's veil."i The comments of 
Steevens on the suggestion afford us an amusing 
specimen of his style. ' ' Whether the wife of our author 
was beautiful, or otherwise, was a circumstance beyond 
the investigation of Oldys . . . yet surely it was natural 
to impute charms to one who could engage and fix the 
heart of a young man of such uncommon elegance of 
fancy. "2 

It may be assumed that the young couple lived with 
Mr. John Shakespeare, and that Anne Shakespeare 
helped in the housework, while her husband found 
something to da, either in teaching at school or copy- 
ing papers in a lawyer's office. 



Ill 

In or about 1586, Shakespeare came to London to 
seek his fortune, and it was not long before he was 
well known as an actor and playwright. About a 
century afterwards, someone invented the story of his 
robbing a park. Not once, but several times, was he 
guilty of this "extravagance," to borrow the discreet 
phrase of Mr. Nicholas Rowe;^ "and though it seemed 
at first to be a blemish upon his good manners, and a 
misfortune to him, yet it afterwards happily proved the 
occasion of exercising one of the greatest geniuses that 
ever was known in dramatic poetry." The park, in 
process of time, was identified with Charlecote, and 
the owner with Sir Thomas Lucy. Malone showed, 
however, by reference to the Records, that the Lucys 
had no park either at Charlecote or Fulbrooke.^ Part 

^ Sonnet xcv., ii, " Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot." 
2 Quoted m Malone, op. cit., xx. 307, note. 
^ Accoutit of the Life of Shakespeare, 1709. 

■* Malone, op. cit., ii. 145-9. See the note in Halliwell-Phillipps, ti.s., 
ii. 385- 



THE DEER-STEALING LEGEND 39 

of the Fulbrooke estate, before the Hampton woods 
were inclosed, had been a park till the reign of Philip 
and Mary. The privileges of park and warren had 
been abolished before the property came to the Lucy 
family, but the name of Fulbrooke Park was still used 
as a title of courtesy.^ But it must be confessed that 
taking deer from any inclosed ground, even without 
any riotous conduct, was an offence within the Act of 
Elizabeth. 

After the lapse of centuries, the offence, if it hap- 
pened, may fairly be condoned. Many people, more- 
over, are pleased at thinking how valiantly the keepers 
would be encountered '^on a shiny night." But the 
poaching romance seems to have been unknown in 
1693, when Mr. Dowdall left his club or ''knot of 
friends " at Kineton, and stayed at Stratford on the 

^ The estate of Fulbrooke was granted, early in the fifteenth century, 
to the Regent Duke of Bedford, with leave to impale a park ; it is re- 
corded that he despoiled a nunnery, and pulled down a church and a 
whole village, to effect his purpose. After his death it was granted to 
John Talbot, Lord Lisle of Kingston Lisle, From him it passed to the 
great Earl of Warwick ; and after his death to his son-in-law, the Duke 
of Clarence, who allowed the park and castle to fall into decay. Ful- 
brooke came into the possession of the Lucy family for a few years in 
1510; it passed to John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, when lord of 
the borough of Stratford ; on his attainder, it was bestowed on Sir 
Francis Englefield, who was convicted of treason and fled to Spain. 
The tract of open land, the park being dispaled and having no legal 
existence, was granted to Sir Francis' nephew, who sold the property 
in 1615 to the third Sir Thomas Lucy. "This Sir Thomas renewed 
the park, and by the addition of Hampton Woods thereto enlarged 
it" (Dugdale, A^ii. War., ed. Thomas, ii. 668-70). Leland (Itin., 
ed. Hearne, iv. 51-2) says, "Here (at Barford Bridge) I saw half 
a mile lower upon Avon on the right Ripe a fair park called Fulbroke. 
In this park was a pretty castle made of stone and brick, and, as one 
told me, a Duke of Bereford (Bedford) lay in it. . . . This castle of 
Fulbroke was an eyesore to the Earls that lay in Warwick-Castle, and 
was cause of displeasure between each lord. Sir William Compton, 
Keeper of Fulbroke Park and Castle, seeing it go to ruin helped it for- 
ward, taking part of it (as some say) for the building of his house at 
Compton (Wynyates), by Brailes in Warwickshire, and gave or per- 
mitted others to take pieces of it down." Mr. C. H. Bracebridge, of 
Stratford, published an account of the park in 1862. 



40 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 

way to the Warwick Assizes.^ The clerk, or old 
guide, who showed young Dowdall round the monu- 
ments, had clearly never heard the story, and did 
not mention buck or doe in his little biography : 
''This Shakespear was formerly in this towne 
bound apprentice to a butcher, but . . . run from 
his master to London, and there was received into 
the Play-house as a serviture, and by this meanes 
had an opportunity to be what he afterwards prov'd. 
He was the best of his family, but the male line is 
extinguishd." The story first appeared in a private 
memorandum made by the Rev. Richard Davies, 
Vicar of Sapperton, in Gloucestershire, and at one 
time Archdeacon of Lichfield. He was the friend of 
a well-known antiquary, the Rev. William Fulman, 
who bequeathed all his MSS. and papers to him 
in 1688. Mr. Davies died in 1708, and left them 
to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, enriched in some 
cases with his own additions. These emendations do 
not add much credit to his literary character. Mr. 
Fulman had written a few words of a note on 
Shakespeare : — 

"William Shakespeare was born at Stratford-upon-Avon 
in Warwickshire about 1563-4. From an actor of playes he 
became a composer. He died Apr. 23, 1616, aetat 53, prob- 
ably at Stratford, for there he is buried, and hath a monu- 
ment, Dugd. , p. 520." 

Mr. Davies filled up the gaps in a livelier strain, 
adding, between the first and second sentences — 

*'Much given to all unluckinesse in stealing venison and 
rabbits, particularly from Sr. — Lucy, who had him oft whipt, 
and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly his 
native country to his great advancement ; but his reveng 
was so great that he is his Justice Clodpate, and calls him a 
great man." 

We omit his coarse variation of the quibble on the 

^ Vide infra, p. 327. 



ALLEGED BALLAD ON SIR T. LUCY 41 

Lucy arms. After the reference to Dugdale and the 
Stratford monument, he added, ''on which he lays 
a heavy curse upon any one who shal remoove his 
bones. He dyed a papist." 

Davies made no reference to the ''bitter ballad," of 
which Rowe had heard some account in 1709, though 
it was supposed to be lost ; nor can we trace much 
likeness between the Archdeacon's foolish talk and the 
passages between Falstaff and Shallow. Rowe seems 
to have thought that Shakespeare was prosecuted for a 
libel. In the young man's opinion, we are told, he 
was somewhat too severely treated by Sir Thomas 
Lucy, and in order to revenge that ill-usage made a 
ba!lad upon him; "this, probably the first essay of 
his poetry ... is said to have been so very bitter that 
it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree, 
that ho was obliged to leave his business and family in 
Warwickshire for some time, and shelter himself in 
London." 1 

The first stanza of the libel made a semi-public 
appearance in 1753, when Oldys was a prisoner for 
debt in the Fleet, and Capell was preparing his edition 
of the plays. A common interest led to friendly 
meetings between them ; and Capell was able to 
introduce the antiquary to a Mr. Wilkes, grandson of 
Mr. Thomas Wilkes, who had known Mr. Thomas 
Jones of Tarbick,2 a village about eighteen miles from 
Stratford. Mr. Jones had died in 1703, aged about 
ninety years. Their visitor told Capell and Oldys that 
Mr. Jones remembered hearing from old people at 
Stratford the story of Shakespeare's robbing Sir 
Thomas Lucy's park, and that the ballad was stuck 
upon the park gate, "which exasperated the knight to 
apply to a lawyer at Warwick to proceed against him." 
"Mr. Jones," says Capell, "had put down in writing 

^ Rowe, op. cit. See Hallhvell-Phillipps, «.5. , ii. 380-3. 
^ i.e. Tardebigge, three miles from Bromsgrove. 



42 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 

the first stanza of this ballad, which was all he re- 
membered of it " ; he seems to be quoting the words 
of the visitor, when he adds, ''Mr. Thomas Wilkes 
(my grandfather) transmitted it to my father by memory, 
who also took it down in writing." Oldys gave a less 
confused account of the matter, in a note first published 
by Steevens in 1778. He said that old Mr. Jones 
could remember the first stanza, "which, repeating to 
one of his acquaintance, he preserved it in writing, 
and here it is, neither better nor worse, but faithfully 
transcribed from the copy, which his relation very 
courteously communicated to me."^ Such a story Would 
naturally grow, as soon as any portion of it was pub- 
lished ; and we accordingly find Mr. A. Chalmers, in 
his edition of the plays, in 181 1, describing the poet as 
'*a man who was degrading the commonest rank of 
life, and had, at this time, bespoke no indulgence by 
superior talents." The ballad, he considered, must 
have made some noise at the knight's expense, "as 
the author took care it should be affixed to his park- 
gates, and liberally circulated among his neighbours." 
Malone, in 1790, was furnished with the entire song, 
found in a chest of drawers that probably belonged to 
Mrs. Dorothy Tyler, of Shottery. She died in 1778, 
aged about eighty years, in a house formerly belonging 
to Mr. Richard Quiney. Malone printed the lampoon 
in his appendix, " being fully persuaded that one part 
of this ballad is just as genuine as the other ; that is, 
that the whole is a forgery." Most people will now 
agree with his opinion that the song was made up from 
the opening scene in The Merry Wives of Windsor. 
He went so far as to see an allusion to Sir Thomas 
himself, and not merely to the Lucy coat-of-arms, in 
Slender's words: "They may give the dozen white 
luces in their coat."^ A line in the forged ballad refers 

^ See note in Malone, Shakespeare, u.s., ii. 140, 141. 
■" Merry Wives of Windsor, i. i. 16, 17. 



THE LUCYS IN THE PLAYS 43 

to the same idea : ' ' Though luces a dozen he paints in 
his coat." This might have been written by a comedian 
on tour, but not by a Stratford man ; for everyone 
there knew that the Lucy coat showed ''three silver 
pikes gasping," and that coat is displayed on, or 
might be seen on, Sir Thomas Lucy's tomb. He 
also used an old device of three luces intertwined or 
fretted in a triangle. On one of the Lucy tombs, 
it is said, the same device was set in each of four 
corners ; but this, of course, is no proof that there were 
a dozen '' pikefishes " in the family coat.^ 

Putting aside the question whether Sir Thomas was 
caricatured as Shallow, one must admit that Shake- 
speare showed a certain respect for the Lucys and such 
persons bearing their names as he met with in the 
English chronicles. He follows Hall and Sir Thomas 
More in the matter of the pretended private marriage 
between Edward IV. and Dame Elizabeth Lucy, on 
which Richard III. rested his title for a time, though 
the story was afterwards told of Lady Elizabeth Butler. 
Dr. Robert Shaw was ordered to preach on the subject 
at Paul's Cross, and delivered a " shameful sermon " to 
prove that Edward V. and his brother were illegitimate 
by reason of a marriage of precontract with Elizabeth 
Lucy. But the people, we are told, stood as if they 
had been turned into stones. And "the preacher gat 
him home and never after durst look out for shame, but 
kept him out of sight as an owl." And when he was 
told that he was an object of scorn, "it so strake him 
to the heart that in few days after he withered away."^ 
The usurping Gloucester inquires of the Duke of 
Buckingham if he had spoken at the Guildhall about 
the blot on his nephew's title. "I did," is the reply, 

" with his contract with Lady Lucy, 
And his contract by deputy in France." ^ 

1 The "dozen," however, need not have been intended literally. 
"^ Hall's Chronicle, ed. 1809, p. 368. '^ Richard III., iii. 7, 4. 



44 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 

Once more Gloucester comes in "between two bishops," 
and Buckingham repeats the story : — 

" You say that Edward is your brother's son : 
So say we too, but not by Edward's wife : 
For first he was contract to Lady Lucy — 
Your mother lives a witness to that vow."^ 

Sir William Lucy, who takes a prominent part in 
the first part of Henry VI., ^ is only once mentioned in 
Hall's Chronicle. In describing the Battle of North- 
ampton, fought upon the gth July, 1460, in which the 
Yorkists were victorious, the historian says that Sir 
William "made great haste to come to part of the 
fight, and at his first approach was stricken in the head 
with an axe."^ He is represented in the play as taking 
a leading part in the French war. We find him first 
coming to the Duke of York from the camp before 
Bordeaux, where old Talbot is beleaguered. The 
English are " park'd and bounded in a pale," like a 
herd of deer. "If we be English deer," says Talbot, 

" be then in blood ; 
Not rascal-like, to fall down with a pinch. "^ 

Lucy is sent to get assistance from Richard of York, 
and pleads for the rescue of the brave general and 
valiant John : 

" his son young John, who two hours since 
I met in travel toward his warlike father. " ^ 

"Thou princely leader of our English strength, 
Never so needful on the earth of France, 
Spur to the rescue of the noble Talbot, 
Who now is girdled with a waist of iron 
And hemmed about with grim destruction."^ 

1 Ihid., 177-80. 

^ The part which Shakespeare took in this play is, of course, one of 
the moot points of Shakespearean criticism. Beside the importance 
given to Sir WilHam Lucy, there are, however, one or two possible 
references to Stratford-on-Avon. The lines in the first act (i, 154) about 
" keeping our great Saint George's feast," and the comparison (i. 2, 142) 
of Joan of Arc to *' Helen, mother of great Constantine," may be reminis- 
cences of the paintings in the Guild Chapel. 

•' Hall, U.S.-, p. 244. ■* I Henry VI. iv. 2, 45-9. 

■'' Id., 3, 35-6. '^ Ibid., 17-21. 



SIR WILLIAM LUCY 45 

In the next scene he is introduced to Somerset by one 
of Talbot's captains — 

*' How now, Sir William, whither were you sent? " 

Both the question and the answer, we may observe, 
are in false English. 

*' Whither, my Lord? from bought and sold Lord Talbot ; 
Who, ring'd about with bold adversity, 
Cries out for noble York and Somerset."^ 

"If he be dead," says the general, "brave Talbot, 
then adieu." "His fame lives in the world," retorts 
Lucy, "his shame in you."^ The bold knight is very 
formal in speech ; his comparison of the generals to 
Prometheus, with the "vulture of sedition" feeding in 
the bosom, is pedantic f and Joan of Arc is forced to 
laugh at his "silly stately style" when he enumerates 
his commander's titles.* 

" I think this upstart is old Talbot's ghost, 
He speaks with such a proud commanding spirit," 

and the Englishman, pragmatical to the last, warns 
the Dauphin that from their ashes shall be reared "a 
phcenix that shall make all France afeared."^ 



IV 

Almost all the personal anecdotes about Shake- 
speare have come down to us from Sir William 
Davenant, the author of Gondihert. He was proud of 
having seen Shakespeare on his occasional visits to 
Oxford, and he admired, above everything known in the 
past, the English drama, whose traditions he hoped to 
perpetuate. In Dryden's preface to the altered Tempest^ 
he tells us that Sir William first taught him to admire 

^ Id., iv. 4, 12-15. ^ Ihid., 45-6. ^ Id., iv. 3, 47-8. 

* Id., 7, 72. The "silly stately style" is characteristic, however, of 
the whole play, and not merely of Lucy's speeches. 
^ Ibid., 87-93. 



46 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 

Shakespeare, ''a poet for whom he had particularly 
high veneration."^ If we could evoke some shadow 
of the living Shakespeare, it could only be with the 
help of Davenant's recollections. We shall find little 
help from painting or sculpture ; but we can compare 
what was said by those who knew the poet, or had 
talked with his friends ; seeking, in his own phrase, 
the image *'in some antique book, since mind at first 
in character was done." 

Sir William was the son of Mr. John Davenant, an 
Oxford vintner, who kept a tavern afterwards known 
as the "Crown." Mr. Davenant was a grave and 
discreet man, *' yet an admirer and lover of plays and 
play-makers, especially Shakespeare, who frequented 
his house in his journeys between Warwickshire and 
London." His wife was good-looking and clever, and 
apparently of unblemished reputation to the end of her 
days. The eldest boy, Robert, took after his father, 
"who was seldom or never seen to laugh." The next 
brother, William, was full of high spirits ; his genius 
led him "in the pleasant paths of poetry," though he 
picked up some smattering of logic at Lincoln College.^ 
"Parson Robert" used to meet Aubrey at St. John's, 
and told him how kind Shakespeare had been.^ Aubrey 
saw his way to a scandal at Mrs. Davenant's expense. 
"Now Sir William would sometimes, when he was 
pleasant over a glass of wine with his most intimate 
friends, e.g. Sam Butler (author of Hudibras), &c., 
say that it seemed to him that he writt with the very 
spirit that Shakespeare, and seemed contented enough 
to be thought his son."^ There was an old story told 

^ Works of Dryden, ed. Scott and Saintsbury, iii. io6. 

2 Anthony h. Wood, Ath. Oxon. (1692), ii. 292. This, with other 
pertinent extracts, was printed by Halliwell-Phillipps, ti.s., ii. 49. 

* See Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Andrew Clark, 1898, i. 204. "I have 
heard Parson Robert say that Mr. W. Shakespeare has given him a 
hundred kisses." These words were crossed out in Aubrey's MS. 

^ Ihid. Aubrey omitted a verb after " Shakespeare." 



THE DAVENANT STORY 47 

by Taylor the water-poet in 1629,^ which in process 
of time was applied to Davenant. "A boy, whose 
mother was noted to be one not overloden with honesty, 
went to seeke his godfather, and enquiring for him, 
quoth one to him, Who is thy godfather ? The boy 
reply'd, his name is goodman Digland the gardiner. 
Oh, said the man, if he be thy godfather, he is at 
the next alehouse, but I feare thou takest God's name 
in vain." . The quip was ascribed to a townsman. 
When applied to Davenant, it was transferred to a 
doctor of divinity,^ and at last to one of the heads of 
houses.^ Betterton passed it on to Pope, who be- 
stowed it upon Oldys at the Earl of Oxford's table, 
about 1 740-1 ;* but the antiquary records in his ''second 
annotated Langbaine " that he had found the story 
in its original form among Taylor's collections from 
the taverns. 

The relationship at which Aubrey sneered was son- 
ship of a literary kind. Those who shared in the help 
of the same Genius were regarded as fathers and sons, 
or as brothers, according to their dignity. Chapman, 
for instance, wrote to Nathaniel Field as his 'Moved 
son,"^ and some of Howell's letters were addressed to 
"my father, Mr. Ben Jonson." Sergeant Hoskyns, 
said Aubrey, was Jonson's "father"; and his son, Sir 
Bennet Hoskyns, asked Jonson to adopt him. " No," 
said Ben, "I dare not; 'tis honour enough for me to 
be your brother : I was your father's son, and 'twas he 
that polished me."^ 

^ Extract in Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., ii. 43, from Taylor's pamphlet, 
Wit and Mirth chargeahly collected out of Tavernes, etc., 1629 (in fol. 
1630), 

2 Hearne's MS. pocket-book for 1709, in Bodleian ; extract printed 
U.S., ii. 44. ^ Spence's Anecdotes, extract printed 7(.s. 

* Oldys' MS. Collections, printed by Steevens, 1778. The story here 
assumes the "old townsman" version. Extract printed u.s., ii. 45. 

^ Commendatory verses prefixed to A Wotnan is a Weathercock, 
(published 1612), in Mermaid ed., p. 339. 

•^ Aubrey, ^^.s., i. 417-8. 



48 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 

Something of Shakespeare's life came through 
Davenant to William Beeston, an actor at Drury 
Lane. His mother, Elizabeth Beeston, was the widow 
of Christopher Beeston, apprentice to Augustine 
Phillips, of the King's Company. When Phillips died 
in 1605, he left bequests in these words: ''To my 
fellow, William Shakespeare, a thirty shillings piece 
in gold ; to my servant Christopher Beeston thirty 
shillings in gold." We may attribute to this Christo- 
pher the best of all the word-portraits, or pictures "in 
character," as the poet expressed it : " He was a hand- 
some, well-shaped man, very good company, and of a 
very ready smooth wit." On Christopher Beeston's 
death, his widow and her son William were employed 
in the management of *'The King's and Queen's 
Young Company " at the Phoenix ; and when the post 
was given to Davenant, in June, 1640, he accepted the 
young man as his deputy. ^ We know from Aubrey 
that William Beeston was his informant about Shake- 
speare teaching Latin grammar. Shakespeare "under- 
stood Latin pretty well, for he had been in his younger 
years a schoolmaster in the country — from Mr. . . . 
Beeston." 2 

The story of Shakespeare's organising the horse- 
boys' brigade came down from Davenant to Dr. 
Johnson, who had it first from Bishop Newton, the 
editor of Milton. Pope got it from Rowe, who quite 
refused to believe it ; but his friend Betterton had 
received the details from Sir William direct. Dr. 

^ The particulars are recorded in Collier's Atmals, ii. 99-102. See 
also id., 78, 83, 91. The company seems to have borne familiarly the 
name of " Beeston's Boys," and was established about 1636. Collier, 
id., p. 91, makes no mention of Christopher Beeston's widow, and says 
that William Beeston was probably his brother. 

2 Aubrey, u.s., ii. 227, See also i. 97, stib William Beeston, " W. 
Shakespeare — quaere Mr. Beeston, who knows most of him from Mr. 
Lacy. . . . Quaere etiam for Ben Jonson. Old Mr. Beeston, whom 
Mr. (John) Dryden calls 'the chronicle of the stage,' died at his house 
in Bishopsgate Street without, about Bartholomew-tide, 1682." 



THE HORSE-BOYS' BRIGADE 49 

Johnson gave it to Robert Shiels, then helping as a 
copyist at the Dictionary ; and Shiels printed it in 
the Lives of the Poets, which Theophilus Gibber 
was trying to pass off as his father's work, in 1753. 
When Shakespeare came first to London, it was the 
custom to go to the play on horseback. Shakespeare's 
expedient to get a living was to hold the horses of 
those that rode to the playhouse ; and he was so 
careful that everyone called for Will Shakespeare ! 
This was the dawn of better fortune. Finding more 
horses put into his hand than he could hold, he 
hired boys to wait under his inspection, who, when 
Will Shakespeare was summoned, were immediately 
to present themselves with the formula, *' I am Shake- 
speare's boy. Sir ! " As long as the practice of riding 
to the playhouse continued, the waiters that held the 
horses continued to be known as "Shakespeare's Boys." 

Such a story would naturally give offence to the 
more elegant biographers. Mr. Rowe would not soil 
his biography with anything so menial. To Malone, 
the idea of a gentleman "holding horses" was offen- 
sive in the highest degree. Surely, it is urged, Mr. 
John Shakespeare would have helped his prodigal son, 
or Mrs. Anne, poor young creature, would have raised 
money from her farming friends. "We have no 
reason to suppose that he had forfeited the protection of 
his father who was engaged in a lucrative business, or 
the love of his wife who had already brought him two 
children, and was herself the daughter of a substantial 
yeoman." Were not, it was suggested, all the popular 
theatres on Bank-side approached by water, with 
sculls, or a smart pair of oars, and not a-horseback or 
" a-footback " ? 1 

Malone seems to have forgotten that the only regular 
playhouses, when Shakespeare first came to town, 
were in a comfortable corner, half a mile from the city 

^ See Malone, Shakespeare, u.s,, i. 462, note. 
E 



50 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 

wall, and outside the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction. The 
'' Theatre," so called par excellence^ was an open-air 
amphitheatre, built by James Burbage on a site be- 
longing to the Nunnery of Holywell. It had an 
opening into Finsbury Fields, across which a path led 
to the postern at Moorgate ; or one could ride to it 
from High Street, Shoreditch, down Holywell Lane. 
The "Curtain" was a building on the other side of 
the lane, near the great sewer called Moor-ditch. Its 
site is approximately shown by the line of Curtain 
Road. The playgoers might put their horses up at 
the '' Lion," in Shoreditch, or go down past the orchard 
towards the playhouses.^ Sir John Davies wrote 
before 1599 an '^epigram to Faustus,"^ which shows 
that the playhouses adjoined Finsbury Fields ; but 
the riding to them across the grass, or over the 
citizen's footpaths, was meant only as a point in the 
satire : — 

" Faustus, nor lord, nor knight, nor wise, nor old, 

To every place about the town doth ride ; 
He rides into the fields, plays to behold ; 

He rides, to take boat at the water-side." 

Hired coaches were rare in Elizabeth's reign, though 
not unknown. Mr. G. Chalmers cited the Lords' 
Journals for 1601 as to a bill restraining "the excessive 
and superfluous use of coaches," and a line about " a 
badged coach" from Marston's Cy7iic Satire, I599- 
Aubrey heard that in Sir Philip Sidney's time it was 
as disgraceful for a young gentleman to be seen in 
a coach as if he were found walking " in a petticoat 
and waistcoat."^ Hired coaches became common about 
1605. In Dekker and Webster's Weshvard-Ho'^ one 

^ There is a sketch of the ride from Bishopsgate in Northward-Ho, 
by Dekker and Webster, acted in 1607 by the children of St. Paul's. 

'■^ Reprinted in Malone, Shakespeare, 11. s., iii. 152, note. 

•^ Aubrey, u.s., ii. 249. 

* Act ii. sc. 3. Dr. A. W. Ward, £ng. Dram. Lit., ii. 469, says that 
Westward-Ho was certainly written by 1605. 



ON THE STAGE 51 

of the citizens says, "We'll take a coach and ride to 
Ham or so." " O, fie upon't, a coach ! I cannot abide 
to be jolted." In Middleton and Dekker's Roaring 
Girl (161 1 ), a hack-driver appeared on the stage, with 
cape and whip, ready to take his fare from Gray's Inn 
Fields to the other end of Marylebone Park.^ 



V 

Mr. Jones, of "Tarbick," who has been mentioned 
in connection with the Lucy legend, took part in 
handing down another story told to him by one 
of Shakespeare's relations at Stratford. This, at least, 
is the account received by Capell from Mr. Wilkes. 
''My grandfather heard it from Mr. Jones," was his 
formula ; but he also relied on the witness of his friend, 
Mr. Oldys, "a late stage-antiquarian." The story 
was to the effect that Shakespeare played Adam in 
AsYouLike It, when his relative went to see him at the 
Globe. 

Oldys, in his own person, told quite a different story. 
For some unknown reason he fathered it on Gilbert 
Shakespeare, the poet's youngest brother.^ The date 
of Gilbert's baptism was the 13th of October, 1566. 
The time of his death is unknown ; but if Oldys 
were correct in his guess, he would have been about 
a century old before he gave up his visits to the theatre. 
" One of Shakespeare's younger brothers, who lived to 
a good old age, even some years, as I compute, after the 
restoration of King Charles the Second, would in his 
younger days come to London to visit his brother Will, 
as he called him, and be a spectator of him as an actor 
in some of his own plays." As Shakespeare's fame 
increased, Oldys seems to have believed wrongly that 

^ Roaring Girl, iii. i. 

'^ Richard and Edmund, the intermediate brothers, both died in 
Shakespeare's ifetime. 



52 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 

^'his dramatick entertainments grew the greatest sup- 
port of our principal, if not of all our theatres." When 
the stage revived after the Civil War, old Gilbert 
began to attend the plays at Drury Lane. Among the 
actors there he might have met his own great-nephew ; 
for Charles Hart, the great tragedian, was the grandson 
of Shakespeare's sister Joan. According to our anti- 
quary, this rendered the most noted actors greedy for 
some personal anecdotes at first hand ; but the strange 
visitor seemed to be ''a man of weak intellects," or 
at any rate so infirm that he could tell them very 
little. "All that could be recollected from him of his 
brother Will in that station was the faint, general, and 
almost lost ideas he had of having once seen him act a 
part in one of his own comedies, wherein, being to 
personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, 
and appeared so weak and drooping and unable to 
walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried by 
another person to a table, at which he was seated 
among some company who were eating, and one of 
them sang a song." It seems that neither Davenant 
nor Betterton knew of this tradition, or of the more 
trustworthy anecdote from Stratford ; for Betterton 
expressly said he could never meet with any public 
account of Shakespeare's acting, except that "the 
top of his performance was the Ghost in his own 
HaviletJ*'' He knew that his acting was praised in the 
preface to Chettle's Kind-hartes Dreame, in 1592-3. 
Greene had attacked Shakespeare, not for his acting, 
but for being a factotum, stealing the trade from the 
university play-writers, and fancying himself at the 
same time to be the best actor, "the only Shake- 
scene." A comedian writing plays seemed shocking 
to this poor Ragged Robin: " Here is a peasant, or 
rude groom, turned ape or painted monster." Chettle 
apologised for the abuse which he had ventured to 
publish: "I am as sory as if the originall fault had 



HIS PARTS ON THE STAGE 53 

beene my fault, because my selfe have seen his de- 
meanor no lesse civill, than he exelent in the quahtie he 
professes."^ 

In 1598, Shakespeare acted in Jonson's Every Man 
in his Humour ; and, as he was the chief comedian, 
we may fairly suppose that he took the leading part. 
The name of "Mr. Knowell " heads the dramatis 
personce ; and that trivial circumstance led to the story 
that Shakespeare selected the part of the nervous old 
citizen. It is far more probable that he acted the 
part in which Garrick attained a success. "Kitely," 
says Thomas Davies, "though not equal to Ford in 
The Merry Wives of Windsor^ who can plead a 
more justifiable cause of jealousy, is yet well con- 
ceived, and is placed so artfully in situation, as to 
draw forth a considerable share of comic distress." 
Burbage, in this case, was clearly marked down for 
Captain Bobadill ; and Cob, the merry water-carrier, 
belonged to Will Kemp, in preference to Phillips and 
Pope, whose clowning was a little worn-out. In 1603, 
Shakespeare acted in Sejanus, under Burbage as the 
principal tragedian ; but the play died in its birth, and 
we know nothing about the cast of the characters.^ It 
seems probable that Shakespeare acted the part of 
William Rufus in Dekker's Satiro-mastix. In 1601, Ben 
Jonson had given great offence to the minor poets in his 
Poetaster ^^ produced by the children of the Chapel 
Royal: "Thou hast arraigned two poets against all 

^ See reprints of Greene's and Chettle's pamphlets in Shakspeare 
Allusion-Books, ed. C. M. Ingleby, pt. i, 1874. 

'■^ Shakespeare's part may have been that of Tiberius : the title-ro/e 
would naturally fall to Burbage. 

^ The original offence, as is well known, came from Cynthia's Revels 
(1600). Marston and Dekker recognised themselves in the Hedon and 
Anaides of the play. Jonson forestalled any really effective reply by 
writing The Poetaster — a task which, he says in his prologue, occupied 
him fifteen weeks. The Demetrius of this satiric play was Dekker ; 
Crispinus is usually supposed to be Marston. The actual cause of the 
quarrel is unknown. 



54 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 

law and conscience, and not content with that, hast 
turned them amongst a company of horrible Black- 
Friars." Dekker seems to have been chosen as the 
champion against the common foe ; and in 1602 his 
Satiro-mastix^ or the Untrussing of the Humorous Poet 
was acted by the children of Paul's, and afterwards by 
the Lord Chamberlain's company at the Globe.^ In a 
farce called The Return from Parnassus, written at 
Cambridge about that time, we are shown Burbage and 
Kempe instructing the students : ^ " Few of the Univer- 
sity pen plays well ; they smell too much of that writer 
Ovid, and that writer Metamorphosis, and talk too much 
of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why, here's our fellow 
Shakespeare puts them all down, ay, and Ben Jonson 
too. O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow ! He 
brought up Horace giving the poets a pill : but our 
fellow Shakespeare had given him a purge ! " Jonson 
referred to "the players" in the dialogue appended to 
The Poetaster^ as it appeared in the folio of 1616 ; in his 
opinion, he had touched them very lightly, and they 
ought not to have taken offence : — 

'* What they have done 'gainst me, 
I am not moved with : if it gave them meat, 
Or got them clothes, 'tis well ; that was their end. 
Only amongst them, I am sorry for 
Some better natures, by the rest so drawn, 
To run in that vile line," ^ 

The plot of Satiro - mastix lies in the marriage of 
Walter Tyrrel and the love of King William for the 
bride. It is just possible that '* Rufus " was introduced 

1 Marston seems previously to have attempted a reply to Cynthia's 
Revels in \i\sjack Drum's Entertainment. 

^ Return from Parnassus, iv. 5, 14-20 (ed. Arber). The farce was 
acted in January, 1602, at St. John's College, Cambridge. It was 
printed 1606. 

^ Poetaster, "Apologetical Dialogue," 11. 134-9. This dialogue was 
written in 1601, but was not allowed to be printed (Ward, op. cit., ii. 360). 



HIS PART IN SATIRO-MASTIX 55 

by way of reference to the poet's auburn hair. The 
picture of Rufus is given thus ; — 

" Suppose who enters now, 
A King, whose eyes are set in silver, one 
That blusheth gold, speaks music, dancing walks. 
Now gathers nearer, takes thee by the hand. 
When straight thou think'st, the very Orb of Heaven 
Moves round about thy fingers, then he speaks, 
Thus — thus — I know not how."^ 

If this were Shakespeare's own part, as seems likely, 
it would be a good field for displaying his "brave 
notions" and "excellent phantasy." His genius, in- 
deed, as Fuller had heard, was "jocular and inclined 
to festivity." There is no reason to believe that he 
always played the " heavy father," as Old Knowell, or 
Duncan, or Henry IV., as many have supposed. 
Rufus was a part just suited to his nimble discourse. 
We all remember Fuller's fancy of what the fights 
at the "Mermaid" were like. Drake's frigate could run 
round La Santissima Trinidad^ as Shakespeare could 
tack about and outsail Father Ben, "and take advan- 
tage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and inven- 
tion." A poor epigram "to our English Terence" 
was printed by Malone, from The Scourge of Folly, by 
John Davies ; where the Hereford schoolmaster warned 
"good Will" that he might have been a courtier or 
"companion for a king," if he had not played " some 
kingly parts in sport." The lines, at any rate, refer to 
characters played by Shakespeare before the accession 
of King James. 

Mr. John Downes, the prompter, preserved one or two 
stage traditions about Shakespeare. He was for many 
years bookkeeper to the Duke's company, first under 
Davenant in the old house, and afterwards at Salisbury 
Court, in Whitefriars. In Roscius Anglicanus, a 
historical review of the stage, he received assistance 

^ Dekker's Dramatic Works, ed. Pearson, 1S73, i. 249. 



56 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 

from Charles Booth, prompter to the company under 
Killigrew's patent at Drury Lane. But most of the 
work was compiled from his own journals ; for he was 
familiar with every play in the stock, had written out 
the parts, attended all the rehearsals, and prompted 
out of his own book in the afternoons. 

On May 28th, 1663, Davenant produced Hamlet, 
with Betterton as the Prince. We must remember 
that the play was very much cut down, the main plot 
retained, and most of the digressions and "side- 
shows " left out. Mr. Pepys and his wife were there, 
having tried for "a room " at the Royal Theatre in 
vain; "and so to the Duke's house; and there saw 
'Hamlett' done, giving us fresh reason never to think 
enough of Betterton." This was the first performance 
of Hamlet by Betterton, then a young man of between 
twenty-five and thirty years of age. "And he con- 
tinued to act it," says Downes, "with great spirit and 
with much applause till the last year of his life." Sir 
William Davenant, so runs the prompter's note, had 
seen the part taken by Joseph Taylor, of the Blackfriars 
Company, and Taylor had been "instructed by the 
author, Mr. Shakespeare." "Sir William taught Mr. 
Betterton in every particle of it, which by the exact 
performance of it gained him esteem and reputation 
superlative to all other players."^ We cannot be sure 
that Taylor was taught by Shakespeare himself. He 
is believed to have been a member of the King's Com- 
pany before 161 3, and to have left it for a time before 
Shakespeare's death. He was, in any event, the first 
actor who can be identified as having played the Prince 
of Denmark ; and Wright, in the Historia Histrionica 
(1699), said "he performed that part incomparably 
well." If it be true that Shakespeare had acted the 
Ghost, and that Betterton received the tradition of his 
methods, we should recall that evening at Drury Lane, 

^ Roscius Anglicamcs, pp. 29, 30. 



TRADITIONS OF HIS FELLOW-ACTORS 57 

when Addison sat by Steele, and asked if it was 
necessary for Hamlet to rant and rave at his father's 
spirit. Steele afterwards showed, in the Tatler, into 
what light Betterton had thrown the scene. His voice 
never rose with a " wild defiance " of what he naturally 
revered. There was first a pause of mute amazement ; 
"then, rising slowly to a solemn, trembling voice, he 
made the ghost equally terrible to the spectators as 
to himself." 

On December 23rd, in the same year, Pepys makes 
this note : "I perceive the King and Duke and all the 
Court was going to the Duke's Playhouse to see 
' Henry the Eighth ' acted, which is said to be an 
admirable Play."^ He was unfortunately under a vow 
not to go inside a theatre for six months ; and it was 
very irksome indeed to be told by one of his friends of 
the goodness of the new piece, ''which made me think 
it long till my time is out." On New Year's Day he was 
free, and went off at once to Portugal Row, with what 
result appears from his diary: "My wife and I rose 
from table, pretending business, and went to the Duke's 
house . . . and there saw the so much cried-up play of 
'Henry the Eighth'; which, though I went with reso- 
lution to like it, is so simple a thing made up of a great 
many patches, that, besides the shows and processions 
in it, there is nothing in the world good or well done." 
Some years afterwards his tastes changed, for he notes 
on December 30th, 1668, that he took his wife to the 
same play, "and was mightily pleased, better than 
I ever expected, with the history and shows of it." 
Downes described it as seen from the prompter's box. 
"King Henry the 8th. This Play, by order of Sir 
William Davenant, was all new cloathed in proper 
habits : the King's was new, and all the Lords, 

^ See also under Dec. loth. "A rare play, to be acted this week of 
Sir William Davenant's. The story of Henry the Eighth with all his 
wives." 



58 SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 

the Cardinals, the Bishops, the Doctors, Proctors, 
Lawyers, Tipstaves, new Scenes. The part of the 
King was so right and justly done by Mr. Betterton^ 
he being instructed in it by Sir William, who had 
it from old Mr. Lowen^ that had his instructions 
from Mr, Shakespear hirnself that I dare and will 
aver, none can, or ever will come near him in 
this age, in the performance of this part."^ Downes, 
the prompter, credited Shakespeare with the whole 
play and" all the stage directions, and was thus led 
to think that the poet took the most ''indefatigable 
pains to feed the eye." For the vision of Spirits, Shake- 
speare's "little Pantomime," he had no praise, except 
that it showed some fancy. The grave congees and 
stately courtesies put him in mind of Bayes' grand 
dance. Perhaps the Duke of Buckingham borrowed a 
hint of it from the Queen's vision. "Enter, solemnly 
tripping one after another, six personages, clad in 
white robes, wearing on their heads garlands of bays, 
and golden vizards on their faces " : they wave a spare 
garland over the sleeper, "and so in their dancing they 
vanish, carrying the garland with them. The music 
continues."^ We should compare the stage-direction 
in The Tevipest^ where the airy dancers are suddenly 
disturbed when Prospero starts and speaks; "after 
which, to a strange, hollow, and confused noise, they 
heavily vanish."^ The Duke of Buckingham laughs 
at them all alike, when he makes Mr. Bayes chide the 
players : " You dance worse than the Angels in Harry 
the Eight, or the fat Spirits in The Tempest.''"^ 

We need not believe that Taylor was selected by 
Shakespeare for the Prince of Denmark, or Lowin for 
his fat Knight. Lowin joined the King's Company in 

^ Roscius Anglicanus, p. 34. ^ Hertry VIII., iv. 2. 

^ Tem-pest, iv. i. 

* The Rehearsal, ii. 5. The gfrand dance mentioned above will be found 
ibid,, V. I. 



ALLEGED LETTER FROM THE KING 59 

1604,^ and Ben Jonson had already (1599) spoken of 
Sir John in his Every Man out of his Humour. Burbage 
took the part of Macilente, which suited his spare figure 
very well. Jonson would not beg of the audience "a 
plaiidite for God's sake : but if you, out of the bounty of 
your good liking, will bestow it, why, you may make 
lean Macilente as fat as Sir John Falstaff." ^ He appears 
to include both parts of Henry IV. in his reference to the 
popular favourite. Lowin doubtless succeeded to the 
post very early after joining the company, and would 
know how Shakespeare wished it to be played ; and 
Taylor in the same way learned what the poet meant 
by the distinction between the whirlwind of passion, 
with smoothness, and the same passion torn into 
tatters. 2 

VI 

William Oldys showed in a note on his Fuller's 
Worthies^ now in the British Museum, that the story 
of the King writing to Shakespeare came through 
Davenant to John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire, 
an authority of some distinction in literature. In his 
commonplace book the Duke wrote: "King James 
the First honoured Shakespeare with an epistolary 
correspondence, and I think Sir William Davenant 
had either seen or was possessed of His Majesty's letter 
to him." Oldys, who referred to the preface in 
Lintot's edition of Shakespeare's Poems (1709), where 

^ A. W, Ward, u.s., ii. 137, says: "There is ... no proof that he 
(Lowin) was the original performer of the part, and it is hardly likely to 
have been allotted to so young a man (he was born in 1576). " This opinion 
is further confirmed by the words of Roberts, the actor, in 1729, quoted 
by Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., i. 243: "I am apt to think, he (Lowin) did 
not rise to his perfection and most exalted state in the theatre till after 
Burbage, tho' he play'd what we call second and third characters in his 
time, and particularly Henry the Eighth originally ; from an observation 
of whose acting it in his later days Sir William Davenant conveyed his 
instructions to Mr. Betterton," 

'^ Every Man out of his Humour, v. 7. ^ See Hamlet, iii. 2, 1-16. 



6o SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY LIFE 

it was said that "King James the First was pleased 
with his own hand to write an amicable letter to 
Mr. Shakespeare ; which letter, though now lost, re- 
mained long in the hands of Sir William Davenant, 
as a credible person, now living, can testify." This 
person was doubtless the Duke of Buckinghamshire, 
who died in 1721. Dr. Farmer tried to guess what was 
in the letter — something such as thanks for compHments 
in Macbeth; but all such attempts are useless. As to 
the custody of the document, we may fairly suppose 
that it belonged to Lady Barnard about the time of 
Davenant's death in 1668. It would have passed under 
Shakespeare's will to Mr. and Mrs. Hall, remaining 
with Mrs. Hall on her husband's death. Mr. Hall 
tried to make a verbal will, but did not name an 
executor ; he intended Thomas Nash to have his pro- 
fessional manuscripts: "I would have given them to 
Mr. Boles," he said, "if hee had been here; but 
forasmuch as hee is not heere present, yow may, son 
Nash, burne them, or doe with them what yow please."^ 
Mrs. Hall administered the estate, with a record of the 
imperfect gift as part of her authority ; but there is 
no reason to think that she gave up the letter in 
question. Elizabeth Nash, two years after her hus- 
band's death, married Mr. Barnard, afterwards knighted, 
and on succeeding to her mother's property, lived at 
New Place for a time. 

In 1742, Sir Hugh Clopton told Mr. Macklin, the 
actor, when he visited Stratford in company with 
Garrick, that Lady Barnard, on leaving the town, 
"carried away many of her grandfather's papers." 
Others remained at Stratford, and came with the 
probate of Lady Barnard's will into the possession of 
Mr. R. B. Wheler, who printed some of them in the 
appendix to his History. 

^ Nuncupative will of John Hall, printed by Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 6i. 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 



STRATrORD-ON-AYON 



ORIGIN OF NAME — PREHISTORIC REMAINS; PATHLOW AND THE 
LIBERTY — ROMAN ROADS IN WARWICKSHIRE — RYKNIELD 
STREET IN " CYMBELINE " 

STRATFORD, as its name implies, marks the point 
where a ''street," or paved Roman road, led down 
to a passage across the Avon. At first there was only a 
ford ; in later ages, as Leland ^ tells us, a poor wooden 
bridge was set up, which must have spoiled the old 
access, and yet was a danger in itself. "There was 
no causeway to come to it," says the historian, "where- 
by many poor folks either refused to come to Stratford 
when the river was up, or coming thither stood in 
jeopardy of life " ; until at last Lord Mayor Clopton, 
in the reign of Henry VII., made "the great and 
sumptuous bridge" with "fourteen great arches and a 
long causeway, made of stone, well walled on each 
side, at the west end of the bridge." 

The neighbourhood had been inhabited in prehistoric 
times by the tribes that made the barrows and stone 
circles. Several of the great "lowes," or "graves," 

^ See Leland's Itinerary, ed. Hearne, 1710-12, vol. iv. part ii. pp. 52-3, 
for notices of Stratford quoted in these pages. 

63 



64 STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

were adopted in later ages as meeting-places for the 
open-air Courts, at which the Sheriff or owner of a 
Liberty transacted the affairs of a district. The 
Hundred of Knightlow, for instance, took its name 
from Knightlow Hill, on the road from Coventry to 
London ; on the summit was a British tumulus, on 
which a wayside cross had been erected.^ The Hundred 
of Barlichway, in which Stratford is included, held its 
Court in Barlichway Grove, described as ''a little plot 
of ground, about eight yards square, now inclosed 
with a hedge and situate upon the top of a hill."- The 
town was in earlier times comprised in the Liberty of 
Pathlow, or ^* Pate's Grave"; here the Bishops of 
Worcester had a Hundred Court of their own, with 
a jurisdiction extending over many towns and villages, 
among which were Bishopton, Luddington, and Wilm- 
cote, though most of them, according to Dugdale, 
were almost lost by neglect or the corruption of bailiffs. 
The place, it was added, that gave its name to this 
Hundred ''is an heap of earth ... in the very way 
betwixt Warwick and Alcester . . . near unto it are 
certain enclosed grounds . . . bearing the name of 
Pathlows," where Courts were held twice a year. ^ If 
we refer to The Taming of the Shrew, and what Lang- 
baine's editor calls "the story of the tinker, so divert- 
ing," we should note that it was to one of these Courts 
that the ale-wife was to be summoned for serving the 

^ Murray's Handbook of Warwickshire, 1899, p. 18. Knightlow is the 
most easterly of the four Hundreds — Hemlingford, Barlichway, Kineton, 
Knig-htlow — into which Warwickshire is divided. It comprises four sub- 
divisions — Kenilworth, Southam, Rug-by, and Kirby, called after the 
chief towns and villages included in it. 

^ Dug-dale, Antiquities of Warwickshire, ed. Thomas, 1730, vol. ii. 
p. 641. Barlichway Hundred is the south-western portion of the county, 
including a tract of land almost square in shape. Its subdivisions are, 
on the west, Henley-in-Arden and Alcester ; on the east, Snitterfield and 
Stratford. 

'^ Dugdale, ii.s., vol. ii. 641-2. Pathlow is three miles north-west of 
Stratford, on the road to Wootton Wawen and Henley-in-Arden. 



EARLY HISTORY OF DISTRICT 65 

drink in "unsealed quarts."^ The Bishops also held 
a three-weeks Court called ''Gilpit"; and the name 
evidently referred to the high-road from Stratford to 
Birmingham, which was commonly known as Guild- 
pits, from some right of digging stones or gravel on 
land belonging to the Stratford Guild. 

The choice of Stratford as a Roman station was due 
to the course and disposition of the various military 
roads. Any map of the Roman province will show 
that the place lies at the lower entrance of a wedge- 
shaped district inclosed on three sides by the Watling 
Street, the Fosse Way, and the road between Gloucester 
and Doncaster, which is now called the Ryknield Street. 
The last-named road passed along the western side of 
Warwickshire, from Alcester to the neighbourhood of 
Birmingham. It was often called the Icknield Way by 
the older antiquarians; but it is more convenient to keep 
that name for the better-known road which passed 
across the eastern part of the districts between the 
Wash and Southampton Water,^ and so westward into 
Devon and Cornwall. 

We shall say a word or two as to each of the great 
highways, which by their intersections and branches 
completely inclosed the woodlands of Arden. The 
first to be made was the Watling Street, which passed 
obliquely from the Kentish coast to the Thames at 
the Westminster Ford, and so to Verulam and the 
Temple of Diana in the market-place at Dunstable. 
On the border of Leicestershire and Warwickshire it 
passed a place now called High Cross, where its course 
was intersected, as time went on, by the Fosse Way.^ 

^ Taming of the Shrew, Ind., 2, 89-90 : — 
" You would present her at the leet, 

Because she brought stone jugs and no seal'd quarts." 
^ Icknield Street, and Icknield Port Road, in the western portion of 
Birmingham, indicate, under the more familiar form, the course of the 
Ryknield Way through the city. 

^ High Cross (Benonce, or Venonce) lies in Great Copstone Parish, 
F 



66 STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

Near Wall (Letocetum), two miles south of Lichfield, it 
was similarly intersected by the Ryknield Street. We 
need not trace minutely the rest of its course ; turning 
due west at Wall, it passed to Uriconium or Viro- 
conium (Wroxeter), ''the White Town by the Wrekin," 
and eventually, taking a north-westerly course, met 
the sacred waters of the Dee at Deva (Chester). Its 
branches were in North Wales and Mid-Britain, and 
ran toward each extremity of the Roman Wall. When 
the English invaders saw it, lying like a beam of light 
across the land, they gave it the name of Watling 
Street, which was their legendary title for the "path 
of souls " along the Galaxy, or Milky Way. 

The Fosse Way connected the military hospitals at 
Bath with the colony of veterans at Lincoln, where it 
joined other roads from the south by which supplies and 
reliefs were sent to the fortresses by the wall. The 
mediaeval chroniclers were fond of a jingling phrase 
about the road running "from Totnes to Caithness," 
which Drayton adopted in those lines of the Poly-Olbion 
that tell us of the passing of the Fosse : — 

" From where rich Cornwall points to the Iherian seas, 
Till colder Cathnes tells the scattered Orcades.^ 

between Lutterworth and Nuneaton, 440 feet above sea-level. A pillar, 
erected in 171 1 by the neighbouring gentry, to commemorate the restora- 
tion of peace, bears a Latin inscription (translated in Murray's Warwick- 
shire, p. 8): "If, traveller, you search for the footsteps of the ancient 
Romans, you may here behold them. For here their most celebrated 
ways, crossing one another, extend to the utmost boundaries of Britain ; 
here the Vennones kept their quarters ; and, at the distance of one mile 
from here, Claudius, a certain commander of a cohort, seems to have 
had a camp towards the street: and towards the fosse, a tomb." See 
Drayton, Poly-Olbion, 13th song, 311-13 : — 

"that Cross 

Where those two mighty ways, the Watling and the Fosse, 

Our centre seem to cut." 
Watling Street continues its progress W.N.W. to Mancetter (Mandues- 
sedum), ten miles distant ; the Fosse Wa)^ proceeds N.N.E. to Leicester 
(Ratse) thirteen miles. 

^ Poly-Olbion, song xvi. 105-6. Cf. id., xiii. 315-16, "from Michael's 
utmost Mount, to Cathnesse." 



ROMAN ROADS IN WARWICKSHIRE 67 

About ten miles south of Stratford its route is marked 
by Stretton-on-the-Foss, and six miles north of Stretton, 
by the site of a station that guarded the Stour at 
Halford. "Through all this county," says Gale in his 
essay on the Four Great Ways, ''the course of it is 
very plain and conspicuous " ; near Street-Ashton and 
Monk's Kirby, he adds, ''part of it lies open like a 
ditch, having not been filled with stones and gravel as 
in most other places."^ 

The third side of our oblong or coffin-shaped figure 
was formed by the road from South Wales and 
Gloucester. Where it enters Warwickshire we trace it 
from ford to ford, all occupied as military stations. Of 
these we have Bidford-on-Avon, and Wixford, and the 
Roman station at Alcester (Alauna), where there is a 
confluence of rivers. Dugdale thought that " Ickle 
Street," in this town, must have been named after the 
old military way ; and, at any rate, Roman tiles and 
other antiquities, including many gold and silver coins, 
have been found there at different times. The Ryknield 
Street passed through Coughton, and thence to a point 
near Birmingham,^ where it entered Staffordshire, 
and "there running thro' Sutton Park and by Shenston, 
cutts the Watting Street scarce a mile East from 
Wall and Litchfield.''''^ Drayton seems to have felt a 
patriotic affection for this Warwickshire road, watching 
it from its birth on the shore of the Irish Sea to its final 
resting-stage at the foot of the Roman wall. In 
Poly-Olhion he is so bold as to personify the Watling 
Street, or the Spirit of the Road, as a kind of genius 

•^ See Gale's essay, printed in Hearne's Leland, vi. 99, Street Ashton 
is in Monk's Kirby parish, some four miles south of the junction with 
Watling Street at High Cross. A mile south-west, nearer the actual 
course of the street, is Stretton-under-Fosse, not to be confused with 
Stretton-on-the-Foss. The progress of the street over Dunsmore Heath, 
further south again, is marked by Stretton-on-Dunsmore. 

^ Near Perry-Bar, in the northern suburbs of the city. 

^ Gale's essay, in Leland, tc.s., vol. vi. 



68 STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

loci,^ who tells the tale of the Ryknield struggling 
northwards after Fosse Way : — 

" Then in his oblique course the lusty straggling Street 
Soon overtook the Fosse ; and toward the fall of Tine^ 
Into the German Sea dissolv'd at his decline. " 

The neck of the oblong figure was the narrow space 
between the fort at Bidford-on-Avon and the post at 
Halford, where the Fosse Way crossed the Stour.^ If 
the wild tribes of Arden were to be kept in place, it was 
necessary to occupy their passage of the Avon at Strat- 
ford and to make a junction between the two northward 
lines ; and this object was attained by driving a road 
from Bidford and Alcester to Stratford, and thence 
across the ford to the station on the Stour. This, we 
suppose, must have been the time when Stratford first 
began to exist as a village, with a guard-house, a 
posting-station, and such other subsidiary dwelling- 
places as would be required. 

Shakespeare has made repeated allusions in Cymbe- 
line to the Ryknield Street. It will be remembered 
that in a large sense the name was given to the whole 
route from the extremity of South Wales to the Tyne. 
The portions west of Gloucester were also known as 
the Julia Strata, a term which may have some connec- 
tion with Julius Caesar, or with Julius Frontinus, who 
subdued the valley of the Severn ; but it seems to be, 
in reality, a late fabrication, the name being derived 
from Striguil, from which the De Clares, Earls of 
Pembroke and Striguil, and their successors, the 
Marshals, took their second title.^ 

It need not be supposed that the poet gave any 

■^ Poly-Olbion, xvi. 20-219. 

^ As the crow flies, this is about ten miles' distance. 

^ Striguil, or Strigul (Strigulia), was a castle some four miles from 
Chepstow on the road to Abergfavenny. The name, however, became 
applied in common usage to the greater castle at Chepstow, in the same 
lordship. See note in Bohn's Giraldus Cambrensis (ed. Forester and 
Wright), p. r86. 



RYKNIELD STREET 69 

credit to the Romans for the construction of the mili- 
tary roads. It was in his time an article of popular belief 
that the Britons had been more or less civilised ever 
since the arrival of ''Brutus the Trojan," long before 
King Bladud had found the seething springs of Bath, 
or King Lear had set up his throne in Leicester ; and 
Lear and Cordelia, as the chroniclers said,^ were dead 
and gone before the first stone had been cut for the 
walls of Rome. The great highways, it was thought, 
were placed under the King's peace by Mulmutius, 
who first reunited ''the five kingdoms of Britain"; 
he was said to have passed a code of laws, of which 
fragments are still reputed to exist in Wales ; and we 
are told that after a prosperous reign of forty years 
he died in "London, or New Troy," and was buried 
near the Temple of Concord. Another name for the 
capital is used at the end of the play, where Cymbeline 
proposes to set the seal on his victory in London : 

" So through Lud's-town march : 
And in the temple of great Jupiter 
Our peace we'll ratify. "^ 

Shakespeare follows Holinshed in the main, and does 
not seem to have been acquainted with the romance 
of GeoJEfrey of Monmouth ; otherwise, instead of the 
lines about " giglot fortune," and the lost chance of 
capturing Csesar's sword, ^ we must have had the 
legend of the slain Prince Nennius actually carrying 
to his grave that "Yellow Death," so called because 
none could recover from a blow with its brassy blade. 
" You must know," says the King in the play, 

"Till the Injurious Romans did extort 
This tribute from us, we were free."^ 

^ See Geoffrey of Monmouth, lihh. i. ii., for the early source of these 
mythical histories. ° Cymheline, v. 5, 481-3; also iii. i, 32. 

' Id., iii. I, 30-1 : " Cassibelan, who was once at point — O giglot 
fortune ! — to master Csesar's sword." The story of Nennius will be 
found in Geoffrey of Monmouth, lih, iv. cap. 4, 

■* Cymheline, iii. i, 48-50. 



70 STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

' * Britain is 
A world by itself," 

says rough Prince Cloten, in a highly classical phrase, 

* ' and we will nothing" pay 
For wearing" our own noses. "^ 

The King's speech to the Roman ambassador is full of 
reverence for the royal road-maker : — 

" Our ancestor was that Mulmutius which 
Ordain'd our laws, whose use the sword of Ceesar 
Hath too much mangled ; whose repair and franchise 
Shall, by the power we hold, be our good deed. 
Though Rome be therefore angry : Mulmutius made 

our laws. 
Who was the first of Britain which did put 
His brows within a golden crown and call'd 
Himself a king,"^ 

The Queen speaks bravely of Julius Csesar, and his 
brag of "'Came' and 'saw' and 'overcame'"; but 
here in Britain, 

" ribbed and paled in 
With rocks unscaleable and roaring waters," 

and the Goodwin Sands to suck in his ships to the 
topmast, Caesar, she said, was carried off from our 
coast twice beaten.^ This accounts for the selection 
of Milford Haven, on the western extension of the 
Ryknield Street, as the port from which the voyages 
to Italy were made, and as the landing-place for the 
"legions garrison'd in Gallia."* It was apparently 
from Milford that Posthumus set forth to "that drug- 
damn'd Italy, "^ and here, when his mind was poisoned, 
he appointed a treacherous ambush for fair Imogen. 

^ Ibid., 12-14. 

^ Ibid., 55-62. See Poly-Olbio7i, xvi. 97 : "Since us, his kingly Ways, 
Muhmitius first beg-an," and Selden's note on the passage. Mulmutius, 
Molmutius, or Malmutius, is said to be commemorated in the name of 
Malmesbury. Etymologists, however, prefer a more historical derivation. 

^ Cymheline, u.s., 14-33. * -^'^•i iv. 2, 333-6. '^ Id., iii. 4, 15. 



RYKNIELD STREET IN CYMBELINE 71 

The lady reads his letter: "Take notice, that I am 
in Cambria, at Milford Haven." 
She cries : 

" O for a horse with wings ! Hear'st thou, Pisanio? 
He is at Milford Haven : read, and tell me 
How far 'tis thither. If one of mean affairs 
May plod it in a week, why may not I 
Glide thither in a day ? 

... by the way, 
Tell me how Wales was made so happy as 
To inherit such a haven. "^ 



II 

MEDIEVAL STRATFORD : ITS CONNECTION WITH THE BISHOPS OF 
WORCESTER — GROWTH OF THE TOWN — THE FAIRS AND 
MARKETS — EPISCOPAL RIGHTS IN STRATFORD— OFFICERS OF 
THE MEDIEVAL BOROUGH 

We now pass onward to a time when Stratford 
formed part of a large agricultural domain belonging 
to the Crown of Mercia. The chronicler tells us that 
the details of the English conquests in these parts 
were never recorded in history. " Many and frequent 
were the expeditions from Germany, and many the 
lords who strove against each other ; but the names 
of the chieftains are unknown by reason of their very 
multitude." Mercia, we suppose, was at one time 
composed of a number of independent states, which 
were gradually fused into a single monarchy. In the 
middle of the ninth century it was still in form a 
kingdom by itself; but in fact it had become a de- 
pendency of Wessex under Ethelwulf, the father of 
Alfred. Shortly before the year 840, King Bertulf 
of Mercia had deprived the Bishop of Worcester of 
several valuable estates, and the injured prelate deter- 
mined to make an appeal to the " Witan," or Council. 

1 Id. , iii. 2, 44-63. 



72 STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

Accordingly at Easter in that year he attended the 
Court which Bertulf and his Queen Sedrida were 
holding in their royal town of Tamworth. The Bishop 
pleaded before the solemn assembly, and gained his 
cause, but not without a grievous ransom ; for the King 
demanded four warhorses, and a fine ring, and heavy 
silver dishes and goblets ; and the avaricious Sedrida 
claimed two palfreys, and a parcel-gilt cup, and silver 
wine-stoups, and other valuable offerings. On these 
terms the Church recovered the estates, freed from 
all burdens of royal exaction. The Bishop found 
a way of recouping himself a few years afterwards, 
when the King of Wessex was away on a pilgrimage 
to Rome, and his people were discontented at his 
project of raising his "child- wife" Judith to the throne. 
It was an opportunity for bringing the power of the 
Church to bear on the tyrant of Mercia. Bishop 
Eadbert, or Heabert, therefore went in the year 845 to 
the Yule Feast at Tamworth, and asked the King to 
give up to his Church at Worcester the estate which 
had once belonged to an old monastery at Stratford-on- 
Avon, comprising twenty farms of arable land in the 
common fields, besides the pastures and woodlands. 
A copy of the King's deed of gift, duly confirmed by 
the Council, is preserved among the Cottonian Manu- 
scripts.^ It is composed in a very inflated style, as was 
usual in the charters of that age, and is written in a 
somewhat Mercian kind of Latin. It somewhat re- 
sembles those Kentish deeds, which were called 
"Humana Mens," because they gave as much free- 
dom as the human mind could conceive, or, to quote 
from Jack Cade, who was learned in Kentish law, they 
were "as free as heart can wish or tongue can tell."^ 
The deed began with a pious exordium, showing that 

^ Dug-dale gives an abbreviated copy, op. cit., ii. 680, at the beginning 
of his account of Stratford. 
^ 2 He7iry VI., iv. 7, 131-2. 



GRANT TO BISHOPS OF WORCESTER 73 

Bertulf wished to purchase an eternal reward by giving 
up a share of his ''transitory wealth." " /;? nomine 
Domini!'''' he begins, "so fading and fleeting is this 
world's state, while all things that we see are rushing 
swifter than the wind to their end." " Therefore, with 
the consent of my Bishops and Nobles and Elders, 
I give to the venerable Bishop Heabert and his house 
at Worcester all my rights in the monastery by the 
Avon called Over-Stratford, with twenty farms, for 
which I have accepted ten pounds' weight of silver in 
consideration of the land being made free for ever. Be 
it therefore free from all burdens of human servitude 
and all secular tributes and taxes, the Church taking 
her rightful profits in wood and field, in meadows and 
pastures, in waters and fisheries," and so forth. Then 
follows a list of the special exactions to which the lands 
of the Crown were liable, such as forced labour and 
purveyance of food for the King and his retinue, pro- 
viding meals for casual guests and huntsmen, and food 
for the horses and hawks, and for the boys that led the 
hounds. In fine, "Let the land be free," declared 
the King, "from all exactions great or small, known 
or as yet unknown, so long as the Christian religion 
shall remain among the English in this island of 
Britain." The charter was marked with the sign of the 
cross by Bertulf and Sedrida and their eldest son 
Bertric, by several bishops, an abbot, and a priest, by 
Earl Humbert and the rest of the nobles present, and 
by a few untitled witnesses who may be taken as 
representing the Commons of Mercia. 

The Stratford estate remained in much the same con- 
dition till the reign of Edward the Confessor. It 
appears by the Domesday Survey that the extent of 
the arable land had somewhat increased. There was 
enough corn-land to occupy thirty-one ploughs, which 
would represent about 5,000 acres, or a little more or 
less according to the system of rotation of crops adopted 



74 STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

in cultivating plough-lands. There were three farms 
in hand, as part of the demesne, and the priest had 
another for his glebe : there were about half a dozen 
labourers with allotments belonging to their cottages ; 
and the rest of the parish was worked in common-field 
by twenty-one men of the township. We hear besides 
of the mill, rented of the Bishop for ten shillings in 
money and a thousand of eels, and of a great meadow 
by the river more than half a mile long, and about two 
furlongs in breadth. 

Stratford did not assume the appearance of a town 
till the beginning of the twelfth century. The improve- 
ment was due to John de Coutances, Bishop of Wor- 
cester (i 195-8), who, in the seventh year of Richard 
Coeur-de-Lion, laid out the fields east of Trinity Church 
in street and building sites. Each plot, according to 
his design, consisted of a strip of land with nearly 57 
feet of frontage, and 195 feet in depth. They were all 
to be freeholds, being held of the Bishop in burgage- 
tenure, at a ground-rent of a shilling a plot. It will, 
however, be remembered that their size would be altered 
as new streets were made from time to time, and that the 
ground-rents would be apportioned when the land was 
in any way subdivided. Mr. J. Hill, of Stratford, in 
his essay on Shakespeare's birthplace, showed that an 
alteration of this kind was made in the fourteenth 
century, when Henley Street grew out of a short cut 
to the Market Cross, and the Guildpits highway, on 
which the frontages had been set, fell into the state of 
a back road. Some notion of the change thus effected 
may be gained from the discussions about John Shake- 
speare's property ; and the cutting-down in the length 
of the holdings between the two streets will become 
especially plain by the documents relating to a strip of 
land half a yard wide, which John Shakespeare sold to 
a neighbour called George Badger. This strip was 
only twenty-eight yards long, and yet it reached from 



GROWTH OF THE TOWN 75 

the old highway to the frontage on Henley Street. ^ In 
the survey taken in October, 1590, when, by the death 
of Ambrose, Earl of Warwick, in 1589, the lordship of 
the borough had reverted to the Crown, there are 
passages which show how carefully the original ground- 
rents were maintained. We quote from the extracts as 
to Henley Street selected by Mr. Hill in his essay : 
''The Bailiff and Burgesses of the town of Stratford 
are free tenants of one tenement with the appurtenances 
by the annual rent to the lord of three-pence . . . John 
Shakespeare, free tenant of one tenement with the ap- 
purtenances of the annual rent of six-pence : the same 
John, free tenant of a tenement, etc., by the annual 
rent of thirteen-pence : George Badger, free tenant of 
one tenement, etc., by the annual rent to the lord of 
ten-pence," and so forth. Very full extracts from this 
survey have also been published by Mr. Halliwell- 
Phillipps.^ It will be remembered that Shakespeare 
left part of his Henley Street property to his sister, 
Joan Hart, for her life, subject to a burden of the same 
kind : "I doe will and devise unto her the house with 
the appurtenances in Stratford, wherein she dwelleth, 
for her natural lief, under the yeaerlie rent of xij*^," 
and the amount, says Mr. Hill, may have been in- 
tended as a mere nominal rent, "but more likely the 
rent payable to the lord, reduced from thirteen-pence 
by the apportionment of one penny in respect of the 
strip sold to Badger." 

Bishop John de Coutances obtained the grant of a 
Thursday market for his new town, and Bishop Walter 
de Grey, in the sixteenth year of King John, got a 
charter for a yearly fair, "beginning on the Even of 
the Holy Trinity, and to continue the two next days 
ensuing."^ This Trinity fair was confirmed in the 
following reign, and the circumstances are remarkable, 

^ See conveyance, printed by Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 13. 
2 Id., \. 377. ^ Dugdale, u.s. 



76 STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

not only as giving an instance of a movable fair, de- 
pending on the date of Easter, but as showing a 
persistence in the system of Sunday trading which was 
in most parts repugnant to public feeling. The dislike 
to Sunday fairs and markets appears to have been due 
in a great measure to the preaching of Eustace, Abbot 
of Flay, who in the year 1 200-1 made a pilgrimage 
through England, exhorting the people in every city 
and town to abstain from the evil practice.^ The 
dispute ended in a kind of compromise ; for, though 
Sunday markets were not forbidden by the law till 
long afterwards, the judge usually sanctioned a change 
from Sunday to a weekday, in case it was generally 
desired. The town of Stratford seems to have been 
quite remarkable for the number of its fairs. Bishop 
William de Blois (1218-36) set up St. Augustine's Fair, 
which began on May 25th, the eve of the commem- 
oration of the English apostle, and lasted for four days. 
Bishop Walter de Cantelupe (1237-66) established the 
Holyrood Fair, beginning on September 14th, the 
feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, and continuing for 
two days afterwards. Bishop Giffard (1268-1301) ob- 
tained leave to found another, to be held on the eve, 
day, and morrow of the Ascension ; and Bishop 
Walter de Maydenston (1313-17), in the reign of 
Edward II., ''added another Fair, to be kept on the 
day of St. Peter and St. Paul, the 29th of June, and 
fifteen days after. "^ 

The nature of the Bishop's privileges appears by the 
proceedings before the Royal Commission, which sat 
at Warwick in 1277, to inquire into illegal exactions 
and encroachments on the King's prerogative. The 
subjects of inquiry were much the same as those which 
came before the judges in their septennial visits ; but 
the country had been thrown into confusion by the 
rebellion of Simon de Montfort and the absence of the 

1 Id., 681. 2 /^_^ 68^_ 



EPISCOPAL PRIVILEGES 77 

new King upon a crusade, and it was thought necessary 
to hold those special inquiries, with a view to im- 
mediate reform, which are recorded in the Hundred 
Rolls. Stratford still seems to have been treated as 
a portion of the Liberty of Pathlow. It is doubtful, 
indeed, whether the Bishop had any authority to allow 
the townsmen any separate Court, though some 
arrangement was afterwards made by which they trans- 
acted their own affairs before the Bailiff. Throughout 
the whole district the Bishop had a certain criminal 
jurisdiction, the return of writs, and the regulation of 
the sale of bread and ale. He had a gallows for the 
execution of thieves, and a prison in the town, as to 
which the jury remarked that John the Bailiff had let 
a prisoner from Wilmcote escape for a bribe of ten 
shillings. They found also that the Bishop had a 
right of free-warren over his lands in the parish of 
Stratford. This implies the ownership of the pheasants 
and partridges, and hares and rabbits found in his 
demesnes ; and that he also had rights over the deer 
appears by a later trial, in which some of the townsmen 
of Stratford were indicted for a riotous assembly. The 
jury also presented the existence of a market at Strat- 
ford from the time of King Richard I., and went on 
to give an account of a singular quarrel about the sale 
of beer and ale. The dispute no doubt had arisen 
out of a doubt as to the Bishop's powers. He certainly 
had the management of such matters in the district 
of Pathlow as a whole, and in the Manor of Stratford 
as a portion of the district ; but when he assumed the 
right of setting up a borough, it became doubtful 
whether the royal authority would not prevail within 
its limits. Towards the end of the preceding reign 
the judges had visited Stratford, and had appointed 
a standard set of measures for the sale of beer in 
the borough. The new gallons and quarts had been 
used for a time, but after the battle of Evesham the 



78 STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

steward of the manor had forbidden the practice ; and 
the men of Stratford still persisted in using their local 
pottles, and stone jugs, and unsealed quarts, in despite 
of the King, his Crown, and dignity. 

The supervision of the Assize of Bread and Ale, 
as the franchise in question was called, was always 
delegated to an official known as the Ale-taster, or 
Ale-conner, whose business it was to see that the 
brewers and bakers furnished wholesome provisions at 
or under the statutory price. The loaf always pre- 
served the same nominal value according to its quality, 
as ''household bread," or "white bread," or fancy 
loaves, such as ''wastels" and "simnels"; but the 
weight varied according to the value of a quarter of 
wheat, and the gallon of beer changed its price accord- 
ing to the market value of barley. It will be re- 
membered that John Shakespeare was appointed one 
of the ale-tasters for the borough in 1557. The nature 
of his duties will best appear by the common form 
of the oath, which is found in all the descriptions of 
the Court-leet. "You shall well and truly serve our 
Lord the King and the Lord of this Court in the office 
of Ale-taster and Assizer for the year to come : you 
shall truly and duly see that all bread be weighed and 
do contain such weight according to the price of wheat 
as by the Statute in that case is provided : you are 
to take care that all brewers do brew good and whole- 
some ale and beer, and that the same shall not be sold 
until it is essayed by you, and at such prices as shall 
be limited by the Justice of the Peace : and all offences 
committed by brewers, bakers, and tipplers, you shall 
present to this Court, and in everything else you shall 
well and truly behave yourself," etc. The steward 
explained in his charge to the jury how the price was 
to be fixed. "They which brew to sell shall make 
good ale and beer, and wholesome for man's body, 
and when it is ready they shall send after the Tasters, 



ALE-TASTER AND CONSTABLE 79 

who shall taste it and set the assize." The latter term 
is explained as being the top price allowed : ''if it be 
not worth that assize, they shall sell at a lower price 
after their discretion." When the ale-wife, or ''tippler," 
had got a store of " nappy ale," clear and sheer, to use 
the tinker's phrase,^ a signal was made by setting up 
a bush, or an ale-stake, or a wooden hand. "When 
the assize is set, they should out a sign and sell by 
measures ensealed, but not by cups and bowls." 

Inasmuch as John Shakespeare also served as con- 
stable, it may be as well to extract some short account of 
that office, though the duties are far better described in 
the conversation of Dogberry and Verges. We need 
hardly say that these duties are now superseded by the 
Acts for maintaining the police. Constables were or- 
dained, we are told, to keep the peace, to apprehend 
felons, and to take surety from persons making an 
affray ; they might arrest night-walkers and vagabonds, 
and put beggars and vagrant labourers into the stocks ; 
they were to encourage archery, and to prevent un- 
lawful games, such as "bowling, dicing, tabling, 
carding, or tennis," unless it were at Christmas, or 
excepting a game of bowls in a man's own garden or 
orchard ; but it was always to be remembered that 
noblemen, and people with ;^ioo a year in land, might 
give licences to all who came to their houses to play 
at bowls, cards, dice, or any other of the unlawful 
games. The watch, said the old Acts, ought to be kept 
all night between Ascension and Michaelmas, and in 
every town twelve men should watch, and in every 
village six, or four at least ; and if any stranger be 
arrested he shall be kept until the morning, and then if 
there is no " suspicion " in him, he shall go free ; "and 
if any will not obey the arrest, they ought to raise Hue 
and Cry." Everyone might arrest night-walkers found 

^ Taming of the Shrew, Ind. 2, 25 : "If she say I am not fourteen 
pence on the score for sheer ale." 



8o STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

lurking or going out of the way. ''Ifyou meet the 
Prince in the night," says Dogberry, ''you may stay 
him. . . . Marry, not without the Prince be willing ; 
for, indeed the watch ought to offend no man ; and it is 
an offence to stay a man against his will ! " ^ 



III 

THE PARISH CHURCH — COLLEGE OF PRIESTS — LELAND AND 
LOVEDAY : THEIR ACCOUNTS OF THE CHURCH AND MONU- 
MENTS 

The Parish Church is believed to have been built 
about the beginning of the thirteenth century ; ^ but 
it was much altered and improved by John de Strat- 
ford, Archbishop of Canterbury, about the year 1332.^ 
He built the south aisle and the Chapel of St. 
Thomas of Canterbury, in which he established a 
chantry served by five priests ; and the local devotion 
to the Martyr may account for the large fresco, 
formerly existing in the Guild Chapel, which showed 
the murder of the Saint by the four knights before St. 
Benedict's altar in the transept at Canterbury. When 
this chantry was turned into a College in the reign of 
Henry VI., the Warden and Priests were endowed with 
an estate of about £']o a year. Ralph de Stratford, 
Bishop of London (1340-54), another eminent towns- 
man,* built the college-house or mansion for the 
priests, which Leland described as ''an ancient piece 
of work of square-stone hard by the cemetery." Dr. 

1 Much Ado ahout Nothing, iii. 3, 80-1, 85-8. 

2 Short and accurately written summaries of the architectural features 
of the church will be found in Murray's Warwickshire, pp. 1 10-12, and 
in Windle, Shakespeare s Country, pp. 30-1. 

3 John of Stratford, in 1332, was Bishop of Winchester. He was 
translated to Canterbury in 1333, and died in 1348. He is buried on the 
south side of the sanctuary in Canterbury Cathedral. 

* Ralph de Stratford was a nephew of the brothers John and Robert. 
During his episcopate he rented a house in Bridge Street, Stratford. 



THE PARISH CHURCH 8i 

Thomas Balshall, says Dugdale,^ Warden in the reign 
of Edward IV., helped to improve the church, rebuild- 
ing the "fair and beautiful Quire " entirely at his own 
expense. Dr. Ralph Collingwood, who was Dean of 
Lichfield in the reign of Henry VIII., " pursuing the 
pious intent of the said Dr. Balshall," provided an 
endowment for four children who were to assist as 
choristers in the daily service. Some of the rules for 
their management are quoted by Dugdale in his 
history.^ Their home in the daytime was the College, 
where they waited on the priests and read aloud at 
mealtime ; they were forbidden to go to the buttery to 
draw beer for themselves or anyone else ; and after 
their evening lessons they were conducted to the " bed- 
chamber in the Church," which seems to have been 
part of the building afterwards used as a bone-house. 
"But it was not long after," said the historian, "this 
College, thus completed, came to ruin with the rest" 
of the religious foundations. The Priests' House, or 
College, is no longer in existence. It was granted to 
John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, and afterwards Duke 
of Northumberland, but went back to the Crown after 
his execution for taking part with Lady Jane Grey. It 
was afterwards purchased by Mr. John Combe, whom 
Shakespeare was supposed to have lampooned. The 
lines preserved by Aubrey were probably the composi- 
tion of Richard Braithwaite : "Ten in the hundred the 
Devil allows, but Combe will have twelve he swears 
and vows " ; ^ it is only certain that they were fixed 
upon " the usurer's tomb " soon after his death in 1614. 
The College-house passed on his death to the poet's 
friend, Thomas Combe, to whom he bequeathed his 
sword. It may still be of use to quote one or two of 
the early notices of the monuments near Shakespeare's 

^ U.S., 692. Balshall was a Warwickshire man, from Temple Balshall, 
or Balsall, about midway between Warwick and Birmingham. 
^ Ibid., 692-3. ^ Aubrey, Brief Lives, ii. 226, 

G 



82 STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

grave. Leland, writing in the preceding generation, 
had described Stratford as a town "reasonable well 
builded of timber," with two or three very large 
streets, besides back lanes. "The Parish Church is a 
fair large piece of work, and standeth at the south end 
of the town. . . . The Quire of the Church was of 
late time re-edified by one Thomas Balshall, Doctor of 
Divinity and Guardian of the College there. He died 
1491, and lieth in the north-side of the Presbytery in 
a fair tomb." Dugdale^ tells us of other monuments 
in honour of Mr. John Combe, whose long list of town 
charities is duly set forth, of the poet's own grave and 
monument, and the tablet to the memory of Anne, the 
wife of William Shakespeare, who died in 1623, the 
tomb of Agnes Paget, Mistress of the Guild, of 
Thomas Clopton and Eglantine his wife, who died, 
she in 1642, he in 1643, of George Carew, Lord 
Clopton and Earl of Totnes, and his wife Joyce^ and 
others. From Mr. Loveday's journal^ we may learn 
the condition of the church in 1732, long before the 
stone spire was erected. He calls it a very large 
structure in the form of a cross, "though the north 
and south length, built by the executors of H. Clop- 
ton, is by no means equal to the east and west." 
The middle aisle, he adds, is very lofty, and the 
steeple stands almost in it ; it was a tower with a 
shingled spire, standing "cathedral-wise" between 
the middle aisle and the long chancel. "Fine monu- 
ments of the Cloptons here. Shakespear in the 
Chancel ; A stone also for Susanna his daughter, 
widow of John Hall, gent." "Within the rails, an 
high-rais'd tomb for a Doctor of the College (as they 
call him) Warden Balshal . . . the brass-plates at 
top of the tomb torn off; stone-work, small figures on 
the sides, as Christ crucify'd, — laid in the Sepulchre, 
&c. . . . The charnel-house here is full of sculls and 

^ zi.s., 685-92. 2 Ed. for Roxburghe Club, 1890, pp. 5, 6. 



GUILD OF THE HOLY CROSS 83 

bones, a room over it. The stalls still remain in the 
Chancel of this (once) Collegiate-Church ; the College- 
house west of the Church, is Sir William Keyt's." 



IV 

THE GUILD OF THE HOLY CROSS: EARLY RULES AND CUSTOMS 
— RE-FOUNDATION BY HENRY IV. — THE CHAPEL 

We now come to the story of the little benefit society, 
known as the Guild of the Holy Cross, which has played 
such an important part in connection with the develop- 
ment of the town. Its origin was doubtless irregular. 
The Bishops seem to have considered that they could do 
what they pleased in their new borough ; but it was 
decided in later times that none but " they of London " 
could set up "fellowships" and fraternities without 
licence from the Crown. This Guild, however, seems 
actually to have been founded as early as the reign of 
King John ; and the Corporation of Stratford are in 
possession of hundreds of charters, grants, agreements, 
and Papal briefs and indulgences relating to this 
foundation, through the whole period between the reign 
of Henry III. and the creation of a new guild under the 
patronage of Henry IV. Mr. Toulmin Smith^ has 
printed the rules of the old Holy Cross Guild, by which 
it appears the brothers had to provide a wax-light to be 
lit before the Rood and to be carried, with eight smaller 
ones, at funerals, and that every brother and sister had 
to contribute towards the expenses of a love-feast at 
Easter. To this feast every brother and sister brought 
a great tankard, and all the tankards were filled with 
ale and given to the poor. 

Soon after Henry IV. came to the throne, a general 
inquiry was instituted as to evasions of the mortmain 

^ Documentary History of English Guilds (Early English Text Society), 
1870, pp. 211-25. 



84 STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

laws. There was an obvious defect in the title of the 
Stratford Guild, though Edward III. had protected their 
estates as far as he could by granting them a dispensa- 
tion. But when the whole subject was investigated, the 
brethren and sisters could not show any regular licence ; 
and the Crown seized upon eight houses and a yard- 
land in the fields, given by one Richard Fille, and 
various other properties ; but upon an earnest petition, 
representing the antiquity of the Guild and the piety of 
its founders and benefactors, the King allowed a new 
Fraternity to be instituted in honour of the Holy Cross 
and St. John the Baptist, with power to choose a master 
and proctors, and to appoint two or more priests to 
celebrate Divine Service, and to pray for the souls of 
the King and Queen and the benefactors and brethren 
generally. From that time, according to Dugdale, it 
appears that *' King Henry the 4th was esteemed the 
founder of the Guild." ^ 

Robert de Stratford,^ the celebrated parson of the 
town, showed the same energy in small surroundings 
as when in later days he managed the University 
Chest, and composed the feuds of the '' Northern and 
Southern Nations " as Chancellor of Oxford. His 

^ See Dugdale, tt-.s., 695-6. It is just possible that Shakespeare may 
have noticed the connection between Henry IV. and the Holy Cross 
Guild. His allusions to the King's intention of going- on a Crusade are 
numerous {e.g. Richard II., v. 6, 47-50; 2 Henry IV., iii. i, 108-9, etc.). 
At the very opening of i Henry IV. (i. i, 24-7) the King declares at 
length his purpose to make an expedition to 

" those holy fields 
Over whose acres walked those blessed feet 
Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail'd 
For our advantage on the bitter cross." 
These words were spoken (1. 52) soon after Holyrood day and the 
battle of Homildon. Shakespeare, in writing the scene, cannot but have 
remembered the Stratford Guild and its history, and it is not irrational 
to imagine that the reminiscence helped to contribute to the beauty of 
the lines quoted above. 

^ Robert de Stratford became Bishop of Chichester 1337-62. He was 
twice Chancellor of England. His elder brother, the Archbishop, also 
filled this office. 



THE GUILD AND ITS CHAPEL 85 

brother, the Archbishop, had taken the parish church 
in hand. Robert, with the help of a rate for a short 
term, undertook the paving of the town. He obtained 
many privileges for the original Guild, and, among 
other things, he prevailed on the Bishop to include the 
brethren in the Augustinian rule, and to allow them 
the dress of that order. ^ Leave was also obtained to 
build a chapel and almshouse ; and the brotherhood, 
indeed, was generally known after Robert de Stratford's 
time as the Hospital of the Holy Cross. His chapel 
remained unaltered for nearly two centuries. The 
original chancel was found, however, to be too small 
for the needs of the new foundation. In or about the 
year 1443, therefore, the existing chancel was erected ; 
the nave was rebuilt by Sir Hugh Clopton, who lived 
in the " Great House " opposite. Leland mentions the 
building, as it appeared about the year 1540. "There 
is a right goodly Chapel," he says, " in a fair street 
towards the south end of the town. It was re-edified," 
he adds, "by one Hugh Clopton, Mayor of London. 
This Hugh Clopton builded also by the north side of 
this Chapel a pretty house of brick and timber, wherein 
he lived in his latter days and died." The last remark 
is incorrect, as may be seen by a reference to Stow, who 
was much interested in the man, as being the only 
example then known of an unmarried Lord Mayor. 
Sir Hugh Clopton, Alderman and Mercer, was elected 
to the higher office in 1491. Stow says that he was 
"all his life time a bachelor," remarking that there 
never was a bachelor Mayor before. ^ He died in 1496, 
and was buried at St. Margaret's, Lothbury, with a 
handsome monument, mentioned in the Survey of 
London.^ He had intended, indeed, to spend his latter 
days at Stratford ; but his mansion there had been let 
upon a lease for life to Dr. Thomas Bentley, a former 

^ Dugdale, u.s. ^ See Stow, Sxcrvey, ed. Strype, 1754, ii. 261. 
3 Id., i. 573. 



86 STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

President of the College of Physicians, and this lease 
was still subsisting at the time of Sir Hugh Clopton's 
death. Leland has also described some of the charities 
administered in his time by the Stratford Guild. ^ There 
was an almshouse in which ten poor brethren were 
maintained. The report of the Commissioners who 
surveyed the Guild in 1546 showed that these alms- 
people had 63^". 4^. a year for their maintenance, of 
which lO-r. was to be spent in coals, "and besides there 
was ;^5 or £'^ given them of the good provision of the 
Master of the Guild." Little or nothing appears about 
the sisters ; but we must suppose from the inscription 
upon Agnes Paget's grave that there was work for a 
Mistress of the Guild.^ 



V 

interior of the guild chapel — the dance of death : 
Shakespeare's pictures of death — description of 

OTHER frescoes 

Leland, who described the exterior of the chapel, 
did not mention the interior in the Itinerary which he 
presented to the King as a New Year's gift, but one 
of his notes, containing a curious piece of information, 
has been accidentally preserved. It is known that 
Stow had many of Leland's papers in his possession 
during the preparation of his Survey of London; and 
Hearne, who edited Leland's Itinerary, saw Stow's 
own copy of that work, with a marginal note, evidently 
derived from Leland's memoranda, written opposite 
to the account of the Guild Chapel.^ The note was 

1 See also Dugdale, u.s. 

2 The inscription, as given by Dugfdale {u.s. 685), was as follows : — 

"Anno milleno C. quater LX. quatriplato 
Unicus eximitur annus Pagete obit Agnes 
Et nonas Junii, gylde fuit ilia magistra 
Annis undenis, cuius mansio sit modo celis." 
'^ See Hearne's Leland, ix. 185. 



THE GUILD CHAPEL 87 

as follows: "About the body of this Chapel was 
curiously painted the Dance of Death commonly called 
the Dance of Paul's, because the same was sometime 
there painted about the cloisters on the north-west side 
of Paul's Church, pulled down by the Duke of Somer- 
set tempore Edward the 6th." The latter part of the 
note is later than Leland's time, and is inserted on Stow's 
own authority. He gives a fuller account of the matter 
in the Survey,^ where he tells us that the cloister used 
to go round a plot of open ground called the Pardon 
Churchyard, or Pardon Church Haugh, now part of 
a garden belonging to the Minor Canons of St. Paul's. 
Here Jenken Carpenter, Town Clerk, who was one of 
Richard Whittington's executors, had caused to be set 
up on large panels "a picture of Death leading all 
Estates," with the speeches of Death and the answer 
of every Estate, all "artificially and richly painted"; 
and this, he says, was called the Dance of St. Paul's, 
or the "Dance of Machabray." The verses were 
composed by John Lydgate, the Monk of Bury, in 
imitation of the quatrains upon the Innocents' Cloister 
in the Church of Notre Dame in Paris, where paintings 
of the same kind had existed since 1423, or thereabouts, 
under the name at first of "La Danse Maratre," and 
afterwards of " La Danse Macabre." But " in the year 
1549, on the loth of April," he tells us, "the said 
chapel, by command of the Duke of Somerset, was 
begun to be pulled down, with the whole cloister, the 
Dance of Death, the tombs and monuments, so that 
nothing thereof was left, but the bare plot of ground." 
The "Dance of Death" seems to have originated 
in a contempt for the human race caused by the shock 
of the great plagues which devastated the world. It is 
mentioned in a poem of 1379, containing the line — 
"Jefis de Macabre la danse " ; and Petrarch had before 
that time written in a letter to Francesco Bruni, 

^ Stow, U.S., i. 640. 



88 STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

" Imperious Death joins in a funeral dance, and 
Fortune marks the tune." We hear of a painting of 
this kind at Minden in 1383, and M. Jubinal collected 
the history of many later examples.^ Each country 
had its own way of treating the subject. In France 
and England, the " Dance" was usually a stately pro- 
cession like a Polonaise, the Deaths walking in couples 
with all sorts and conditions of men. Besides the 
examples already mentioned, Mr. Douce alluded to 
remains of these Dances at Salisbury and on the 
rood-screen at Hexham, in the Archbishop's Palace at 
Croydon, and at Wortley Hall in Gloucestershire, be- 
sides a series of similar designs on certain tapestries 
long preserved in the Tower.^ 

We cannot tell when the figures of Death and his 
victims were erased from the nave of the Guild chapel. 
They may have been destroyed as a relic of Popery in 
the Protector Somerset's time ; they may have lasted 
till the year of Shakespeare's birth, and have been 
broken up when the chancel was desecrated. An entry 
has been found among the Borough records of a pay- 
ment made in 1564 "for defacing images in the 
Chapel"; and this might have covered the destruction 
of ^'Paul's Dance " as well as the mutilation of the 
paintings concerned with the elevation of the Cross. 

To understand what the figures were like, we should 
disregard the vulgar tragi-comic pictures remaining at 
Basel or on the Mill-bridge at Lucerne, where Death 
is shown intervening in the common affairs of life after 
the satirical style introduced by Holbein. One should 
rather compare the carved procession in the church at 
Fecamp with the copies of the paintings in the Hunger- 

^ Achille Jubinal, Explication de la Danse des Moris de la Chaise- 
Dieu, 1841. 

^ See Douce, Holbein's Dance of Death, chap. iv. In the south aisle 
of the choir at St. Mary Magdalene's, Newark-on-Trent, is a single 
painting- which probably formed part of a Dance of Death. It is in the 
panel of the screen of a small chant rj'-chapel. 



DANCE OF DEATH IN GUILD CHAPEL 89 

ford Chapel at Salisbury, published in 1748, and the 
reproductions of the Danse Macabre in the Abbey of 
La Chaise-Dieu in Auvergne, issued by M. Jubinal in 
his monograph of 1841, and by Baron Taylor in the 
Voyages Pittoresques dans VAncienne France. The 
copy of the " Dance of Macaber," in Dugdale's History 
of St. PaiiVsj was shown by Mr. Douce to be only an 
emblematic woodcut prefixed to Lydgate's tract of that 
name, printed by Tottel in 1554, as an appendix to the 
" Bochas on the falls of Princes." The work itself is a 
translation from Boccaccio made at the instance of 
Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester ; and the appendix 
contains the verses written by Lydgate in imitation of 
the French original, which were usually set below the 
series of "Death and all Estates," as represented in 
English churches. 

We have no evidence that Shakespeare ever saw 
these old designs ; but we may be sure that he was 
familiar with that representation of a similar subject 
which was known as " Holbein's Dance." The ironical 
pictures of the intervention of Death were commonly 
used in alphabets of initial letters and in the woodcuts 
on service-books and such well-known religious works 
as the " Book of Christian Prayer." But Holbein him- 
self had painted a Dance of Death in fresco in a gallery 
of the Palace at Whitehall, which perished in the 
fire of 1697. This curious fact, said Mr. Douce, was 
ascertained from certain etchings by a Dutch artist 
named Nieuhoff Piccard, which were privately circu- 
lated in the Court of William III. The book had the 
following title, engraved in a border : Imagines Mortis, 
or the Dead Dance of Hans Holbeyn, painter of King 
Henry the VIII. The author states in one of his dedi- 
cations that he has met with the scarce little work of 
H. Holbein in wood, which he himself had painted as 
large as life in fresco on the walls of Whitehall.^ 

1 Id., pp. 1 15-16, 124-6. 



go STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

One would suppose that the satire in these drawings 
would be too simple to take Shakespeare's fancy. His 
pictures of Death are for the most part crowded with 
emblematic figures and full of complex design. We see 
Death in his gloomy forest, exulting in the rank of his 
captives, or pining over those whom he has lost : — 

" But thy eternal summer shall not fade 
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest ; 
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, 
When in eternal lines to time thou growest."^ 

Death does not come alone, but stands plotting with 
" wasteful Time, "2 or casts insults, like some swagger- 
ing conqueror, over his "dull and speechless tribes."^ 
Once or twice the poet seems to make some slight 
reference to the famous Dance. Taking his thirty- 
second Sonnet, for example, by the reference to the 
well-contented day, "when that churl Death with dust 
my bones shall cover," we are reminded of Holbein's 
drawing of the Counsellor : he stands advising a rich 
client, and Death crouches in front holding an hour- 
glass and a sexton's shovel. There was another picture 
of an Unjust Judge, arrested in his bribery by the grim 
messenger, who tears his staff away and gripes him 
by the throat, and we think of the commencement of 
Sonnet Ixxiv. : — 

' ' when that fell arrest 
Without all bail shall carry me away," 

and of the words of the dying Hamlet : — 

" Had I but time — as this fell sergeant, death, 
Is strict in his arrest — O, I could tell you — 
But let it be.""^ 

The instance commonly quoted to show Holbein's 
influence on Shakespeare seems on examination to be 

^ Sonnet xviii. 9-12. 

^ Sonnet xv. 11 : "Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay." 

^ Sonnet cvii. * Hamlet, v. 2, 346-8. 



SHAKESPEARE'S PICTURES OF DEATH 91 

of a very ambiguous kind. ''Let's talk of graves, of 
worms and epitaphs," says poor King Richard ; 

" Let's choose executors and talk of wills ; 
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath 
Save our deposed bodies to the ground ? " 

" For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground," he breaks 
out again, "And tell sad stories of the death of kings." 
They have met with death in many forms, some slain 
in war, some poisoned. Shakespeare seems to be think- 
ing of plots and plays yet unborn, of the ghosts that 
may haunt the usurper, of the murder of a sleeping king 
in an orchard. "All murder'd," moans the weak and 
pining monarch : 

" For within the hollow crown 
That rounds the mortal temples of a king 
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits, 
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp."^ 

The tiny mask allows the king whom he haunts "a 
breath, a little scene." The monarch struts through the 
comedy, and strikes the rest with awe, and kills with 
looks, while the Antic mocks and jeers. 

" Infusing him with self and vain conceit, 
As if this flesh which walls about our life 
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus 
Comes at the last and with a little pin 
Bores through his castle- wall, and farewell king ! " ^ 

^ The phrase reappears in Romeo and Juliet, i. 5, 57-9 : — 
" What dares the slave 
Come hither, cover'd with an antic face, 
To fleer and scorn at our solemnity ? " 
In the preceding scene (i. 4, 55-6), Mercutio's picture of Queen Mab — 
" In shape no bigger than an agate-stone 
On the forefinger of an alderman " — 
possibly contains a kindred idea to that of the miniature Death in a 
mask sitting among the jewels of the crown. As Shakespeare found in 
the Indian agate, of whose marvels he could have read in his English 
Pliny, Mab's waggon-spokes, filmy traces, and collars "of the moon- 
shine's watery beams," so he shows us the presence of Death as in the 
carving of an old gem, or as the Destroyer might appear in the miniature 
sphere of Fairyland. '^ Richard II., iii. 2, 145-70. 



92 STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

The nearest approach to this imagery in Holbein's 
work is found in his drawing of the Emperor, under the 
text, ''There shalt thou die, and there the Chariots of 
thy Glory shall be." Maximilian is sitting on his throne, 
administering justice to his petitioners, and Death in 
the canopy behind his seat is at that moment twisting 
the crown from his brow ; there is a certain humour- 
ous alacrity about the workman, which may remind us 
of Shakespeare's picture, though the ideas of the mask 
and the figures of gem-like delicacy are altogether 
absent. 

The chapel at Stratford contained many other paint- 
ings of various dates. They are now almost entirely 
obliterated, and the early series which formerly covered 
the chancel walls was probably defaced in Shake- 
speare's infancy. After being long concealed and 
forgotten, they came to light again when the church 
was restored in 1804. The frescoes in the choir were 
destroyed in the removal of the plaster, and those in 
the nave were covered up again, being much decayed 
by damp ; but Mr. Fisher succeeded in making 
accurate copies of all that were left ; and these copies 
are carefully reproduced as coloured prints in his 
Antiquities of Warwickshire, after appearing in a 
separate volume. They are well described in Neil's 
Home of Shakespeare, and in Charles Knight's bio- 
graphy of the poet ; and one of the best accounts of 
their discovery is to be found in a Guide published by 
Mr. Merridew of Coventry, from which the following 
extract is taken. "The walls were formerly orna- 
mented with a series of ancient, allegorical, historical, 
and legendary paintings in fresco, which were dis- 
covered during the reparation of the Chapel in the 
summer of 1804; and upon carefully scraping off the 
whitewash and paint with which they were covered, 
many parts were found to be nearly in a perfect state. 
The most ancient were those in the Chancel, which 



FRESCOES IN THE GUILD CHAPEL 93 

were apparently coceval with this part of the Chapel. 
Of these, many parts, especially the Crosses, had been 
evidently mutilated by some sharp instrument through 
the ill-directed zeal of our early Reformers. The 
ravages of time had also so much contributed to in- 
jure them that the plaster upon which they were painted 
was necessarily taken down before the repairs could be 
completed ; so that those which were in the Chancel, 
with a small exception, are now destroyed ; the rest, 
in the Nave and what is now a small Ante-Chapel at 
the West end, being painted on the stone itself, still 
remain, though again covered over." 

Taking the chancel first, as containing the oldest 
series of frescoes, we find that the side-walls were 
decorated with scenes from the Gospel of Nicodemus 
and the Golden Legend, relating to the Invention of 
the Cross, celebrated on the 3rd of May, and the 
Exaltation, to which the 14th of September, or Holy- 
rood Day, was consecrated. Over the Vicar's door 
was a spirited design of dragons, and near it a record 
of the old legend of the Host being insulted in a 
synagogue.^ The side devoted to the Invention of the 
Cross displayed the tree of life and showed how it was 
preserved for long ages near Jerusalem ; the Queen of 
Sheba, a popular figure in Guild-processions, has come 
with all her train to admire it, and King Solomon 
appears in his glory. Next in order came the dream 
of St. Helena, the mother of Constantine ; and we 
may remember that she was specially venerated in this 
country as being a British Princess, the daughter of 
King Coel of Colchester, as the legend ran, and the 
patroness of some of the holy wells in Craven at which 
the peasantry had paid rustic sacrifices. The anti- 
quarians used to fight hard for her insular descent in 

^ The same subject occurs in the interesting' series of medieval frescoes, 
illustrating the history of the Blessed Sacrament, at Friskney Church, 
between Boston and Wainfleet, Lincolnshire. 



94 STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

order to maintain the dignity of the British Church. 
Camden, for instance, says in writing of Constantius 
Chlorus, that he "took to wife Helena, daughter of 
Ccelus or Coelius, a British prince, on whom he begat 
that noble Constantine the Great, in Britain. For so, 
together with that great historiographer Baronius, the 
common opinion of all other writers with one consent 
beareth witness : unless it be one or two Greek authors 
of later time and those dissenting one from the other, 
and a right learned man grounding upon a corrupt 
place of Jul. Firmicus."^ Gibbon took the trouble to 
investigate the story, and showed how Mr. Carte 
"transports the kingdom of Coil, the imaginary father 
of Helena, from Essex to the Wall of Antoninus."^ 
It should be remembered that the Helen of the Welsh 
traditions, who made the Roman roads ' ' from castle to 
castle in Britain," belongs to a totally different legend. 
The frescoes were continued in a picture of the 
Raising of the Cross, which some confused with the 
later feast of the Exaltation. Constantine the Great 
makes his public entry into Jerusalem ; he is welcomed 
by a choir of angels, and the occasion is marked by a 
miracle of healing. On the opposite wall were shown 
the loss and recovery of the holy relics, and the first 
Festival of the Exaltation as instituted by the Emperor 
Heraclius. The artist has followed the story in the 
Golden Legend. When Chosroes the Persian carried 
away the Cross, it had seemed incredible that he should 
ever yield to the power of Rome ; but the Emperor, 
through a fortunate alliance with the Turks, won a 
victory that ranked with the highest feats of antiquity ; 

^ Camden, Britannia, tr. Holland, 1610, p. 74. 

^ Gibbon, Decline and Fall, etc., chap. xiv. , note. His reference is to 
Carte's "ponderous History of England," vol. i. p. 147. The industry 
of Gibbon destroyed the legend of " Coel, duke of Kaercolvin, or 
Colchester " (Geoffrey of Monmouth, lih. 5, cap. 6) ; but St. Helena's 
statue forms the very conspicuous apex to the tower of the new town- 
hall at Colchester, completed in 1901. 



FRESCOES IN THE GUILD CHAPEL 95 

and his triumphal return and pious pilgrimage to 
Jerusalem were regarded as more important than all 
the conquests of Alexander the Great. The frescoes 
showed the details of the war with the heathen, the 
rout of Chosroes, and the return of Heraclius "in his 
great pride," as well as the origin of the Church's feast, 
which had a special significance at Stratford on account 
of the great Holyrood Fair. 

The paintings in the nave were of a somewhat later 
date, having been executed towards the end of the 
fifteenth century, when Clopton restored the fabric. 
Above the chancel arch was a huge picture of the 
Day of Judgment, in the style of Orcagna's terrible 
painting in the Campo Santo at Pisa. On the right 
side, to the spectator's left, one saw the trumpeter, 
a choir of angels, and the Saints passing into the 
heavenly mansions ; there were satirical figures of a 
Pope and a Bishop, and others were shown as saved 
by wearing the robe of St. Francis.^ On the other 
side was exhibited the doom of the wicked, the Deadly 
Sins with their victims, a legion of fiends, and the 
traditionary form of the Mouth of the Pit. 

The wall at the west end was covered by four pic- 
tures. On the one hand was seen the Murder of 
Becket, as mentioned above ; Tracy and Fitz-Urse 
were hacking at his head, Hugh de Moreville swung 
a double-handed sword, and Richard Brito, with a 
distorted face, was dragging at a broad, ponderous 
blade. Beneath was seen an allegorical design of the 
soul ascending from a tomb. The limbs were covered 
with a pink and white plumage, and the figure wore 
a scarlet Phrygian cap. All round this design were 
inscribed stanzas of the poem called "Earth upon 
Earth " :— 

" Earth goeth upon earth as glistening gold, 
Yet shall Earth unto earth rather than he wold." 
^ Cf. Dante, Infertio, xvi. 106-8. 



96 STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

For a variation of the familiar words we may quote 
the epitaph on Florens Caldwell and his first wife, set 
up about 1590 in the Church of St. Martin's, Ludgate : — 

" Earth goes to earth as mold to mold, 
Earth treads on earth glitteringf in gold, 
Earth as to earth return nere should, 
Earth shall to earth goe ere he would. 
Earth upon earth consider may, 
Earth goes to earth naked away. 
Earth though on earth be stout and gay. 
Earth shall from earth passe poore away."^ 

There is a certain literary interest about these lines 
owing to Shakespeare having used similar metaphors 
in the Sonnets, as in the seventy-fourth, where the fell 
sergeant makes his arrest — 

'* The earth can have but earth which is his due " ; 

or, as in Sonnet cxlvi., where the soul is rebuked for 
painting her outward walls so costly gay — 

" Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth. 
Fooled by these rebel powers that thee array." 

The wall on the other side of the doorway contained 
a picture of St. George and the Dragon. The Prin- 
cess of Egypt was there, with her little white "com- 
forter dog " ; the hero's horse was barbed in steel, and 
had transfixed the monster's neck with a thrust from 
the frontlet-spike. Beneath this again was another 
mystical design, of Babylon, and the woman clothed 
with the sun, and the messengers with sharp sickles 
making ready for the harvest. In the niches on the 
south wall were the figures of various Saints, almost 
destroyed by time ; but it is thought that one of them, 
from some remaining letters of the name, and from its 
special emblems, was intended to represent St. Mod- 
wenna, a British saint who lived in the ninth century, 

^ Stow, ed. Strype, «.5., bk. 3, p. 176. 



THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL 97 

and whose memory seems to have been preserved on 
two festivals, the one beginning on July 5th and the 
other held on September 9th. 



VI 

THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL — THE GUILDHALL : PERFORMANCES OF 
PLAYS THEREIN — THE SCHOOLROOMS — THE NEW CORPORA- 
TION (1553) 

In the return of chantries and fraternities made in 
1546, King Henry IV. alone is mentioned as the founder 
and patron of the Guild, and its connection with the 
numerous local charities was evidently regarded as 
accidental. The chapel itself would have been de- 
stroyed, as dedicated to a superstitious use, if the Royal 
Commissioners had not reported that it was of value 
for the great quietness and comfort of parishioners ; 
*'and in time of sickness, as the plague and such-like 
diseases doth chance within the said town, then all 
such infective persons, with many other impotent and 
poor people, doth to the said chapel resort for their 
daily service." Leland has left us a brief description 
of the whole charity as it existed not long before this 
date. ''There is a grammar-school on the south side 
of this Chapel, of the foundation of one Jolepe {i.e. 
Jolyffe), Master of Arts, born in Stratford, where- 
about he had some patrimony ; and that he gave to 
this school. There is also an alms-house of ten poor 
folks at the south side of the Chapel of the Trinity, 
maintained by a Fraternity of the Holy Cross." The 
founder's name is spelt "Jolif" in Stow's transcript. 
He is better known as Thomas Jolyffe, a member of 
the Guild, who by his will in February, 1482, gave 
certain lands in Stratford and Dodwell to the brethren 
on trusts " for finding a priest fit and able in knowledge 
to teach grammar freely to all scholars coming to him, 

H 



98 STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

taking nothing for their teaching." It seems to have 
been treated as a Free School in the proper sense of 
the word, the teacher being free to teach grammar, 
without dependence upon the leave of the Ordinary ; 
and the founder's liberal endowment made it possible 
to secure an income for the master by deed, the children 
being taught gratuitously, or "freely," as the phrase 
ran in common parlance. When Somerset's Commis- 
sioners paid their visit they found that one of the five 
priests was the " school-master of grammar" ; " upon 
the premises is one Free School, and one William 
Dalam, schoolmaster there, hath yearly for teaching 
;^io by patent." A marginal note in the Report shows 
that the school was thought to be well conducted, and 
was therefore excepted from confiscation. The alms- 
houses at that time maintained twenty-four inmates ; 
and the number was not altered when the trusts on the 
property were transferred to the new corporation. The 
old house by the chapel, where the brethren held the 
Easter Feasts and the five priests had their chambers, 
was turned into a town-hall, or a "guildhall," in the 
wide sense of the term ; it ceased to be the home of 
the religious Guild, and was used thenceforth as if it 
belonged to a borough where the public affairs had 
been managed by a Merchant-guild. The house has 
often been altered, both inside and out ; but it has not 
lost its identity with the building described by Leland, 
and it may even claim to be the actual home of Robert 
de Stratford's original foundation. In the time of 
Edward VI. there was a large hall on the ground-floor, 
which was the only place for public deliberations until 
a new town-hall was built in 1633. In this hall 
theatrical performances took place when some noble- 
man's " cry of players" came on tour. It will be re- 
membered that the strolling actors were liable to be 
whipped as vagrants, unless they had some nobleman's 
licence to perform interludes in his service, even 



PLAYS IN THE GUILDHALL 99 

before the punishment was rendered more savage 
by the Act of 39 Elizabeth against fencers, bear- 
wards, common players, and minstrels, not having 
an authority under some great person's hand and seal 
of arms. When the plague burst out in London, or 
stage-plays were for some other reason inhibited, the 
City tragedians set forth in little bands to make what 
they could in moot-halls, inn-yards, and barns. They 
got little enough for their pains, if the municipal 
records are correct. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps showed 
that the Lord Chamberlain's players, among whom 
Shakespeare was enrolled, paid visits to Bath and 
Bristol in 1597, and received as much as 306'. at a time 
in one fee.^ But the extracts from the Municipal 
Records of Bath, lately printed under the authority of 
the Town Council, show that much smaller amounts 
were occasionally accepted, leave being given in that 
case to make a collection from the benches or stalls. 
Payments of this kind were made by the Council to 
the '' Bearwardens of the Queen," and those of Lord 
Warwick and Lord Dudley, and to Her Majesty's 
and Lord Warwick's Tumblers. Lord Worcester's 
players received half-a-crown in 1577 ; but Lord 
Leicester's company were paid a fee of 14^. in the 
following season. Mr. Charles E. Davis, in his work 
on the Mineral Baths of Bath, quotes the Chamber 
Roll of expenses for 1567 : '' Given to the Earl of 
Bath's players, "js. 4^." ; and five or six years later, 
"To my Lord of Worcester's players, 6^-. 2d.: for 
frieze to make the musicians' coats, iSs. 9^. : to my 
Lord of Sussex his players, 4^. 2^." We have the 
pictures of these little travelling bands in Hamlet 
(ii. 2 ; iii. 2) and The Taviing of the Shrew (Induction, 
sc. i). Four or five of them share the waggon that 
carries their humble properties : there is the old man 

^ Visits of Shakespeare s Company of Actors to the Provincial Cities 
and Towns of £ngla?id (iSSy). 



L.ofC. 



loo STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

with a bearded " valanced " face, and the boy who 
plays her ladyship's parts, and the robustious man in 
a periwig. They are engaged, as they go, to act at 
the country-houses, or are announced by the town- 
criers to act in public on market-days. The Stratford 
records contain entries of several performances during 
Shakespeare's childhood and youth. The first is under 
the year 1569, when his father was High Bailiff. The 
Chamberlain's company and Lord Worcester's players 
were both at Stratford in that year, and there is a 
note that Lord Worcester's men were well bestowed. 
''Good my Lord," said Hamlet, ''will you see the 
players well bestowed ? Do you hear, let them be 
well used."^ 

They were treated so kindly, indeed, in the case 
before us, that they returned in the following year. 
Lord Leicester's men, in the same way, played in 1573 
"and received a gratuity," and paid another visit four 
years afterwards. In 1576, Lord Warwick's troupe 
appeared ; and within the next few seasons the Cor- 
poration allowed performances by the companies of 
Lord Strange and Lady Essex and the "dramatic 
servants " of the Earl of Derby. In the year 1587 there 
seems to have been no less than six companies in the 
town. 

Above the hall was a room used for council-meetings 
and as a place for storing documents ; and here Mr. 
Fisher found that vast mass of records relating to the 
older and later Guilds, of which he published copies and 
abstracts in his book upon the Guild Chapel. Next to 
this chamber were the schoolrooms, approached until 
comparatively recent times by a tiled staircase from out- 
side, opening into the yard where the clock was once 
set up, which in the last days of the Guild one Oliver 
Baker used to keep in order for a yearly fee. The Latin 
School is shown, with a ceiling crossed by Tudor beams 

1 Hamlet, ii. 2, 546-8. 



THE LATIN SCHOOL loi 

having carved bosses at their juncture in the middle. 
The high timber roof lately opened above the Latin 
School was found to be ornamented with a pair of 
curious paintings, having reference to the ending of 
the Wars of the Roses. There are two of the symbolical 
flowers, set side by side ; the red flower shows a white 
heart, and the pale rose of York a red heart. The 
metaphor of a change of hearts was a favourite with the 
Amorettists and even with Sir Philip Sidney, and with 
Shakespeare himself. '* My true love hath my heart," 
sang fair Charita to the Arcadian swain, 

" and I have his, 
By just exchange . . . 

He loves my heart, for once it was his own : 
I cherish his, because in me it bides. "^ 

Or again, let us look at the way of touching the subject 
in Richard II. and the twenty-second Sonnet. " Thus 
give I mine," says Richard, "and thus take I thy 
heart." "Give me mine own again," sobs the Queen, 

" 'twere no good part. 
To take on me to keep and kill thy heart." ^ 

Modern opinion is on the side of Elia, who despised the 
" bestuck and bleeding heart," as an anatomical symbol 
of aff"ection ; the midriff, he thought, would have been 
as suitable ; ^ or we might choose that liver-vein of 
Biron which makes flesh into a deity and a "green 
goose a goddess."* The best illustration is Shake- 
speare's own picture of the hearts exchanged like babies 
in long clothes. "The beauty that doth cover thee," 
he sings, 

" Is but the seemly raiment of my heart, 

Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me. . . . 

^ Arcadia^ lib, 3 (loLh ed., 1655, pp. 357-8). 
^ Richard II., v. i, 96-8. 
^ Essays of Elia, "Valentine's Day." 
^ love's Labour s Lost, iv. 3, 74-6. 



I02 STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

O therefore, Love, be of thyself so wary 
As I, not for myself, but for thee will ; 
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary 
As tender nurse her babe from faring- ill. " ^ 

With reference to the place where the school was 
originally kept, we ought to notice another entry in the 
Corporation Book, under the date of the i8th of Febru- 
ary, 1594-5 : ''At this Hall it was agreed by the Bailiff 
and the greater part of the company now present that 
there shall be no school kept in the Chapel from this 
time forth." The Bath records furnish us with a similar 
instance, the church of St. Mary by the North-gate 
having been used for divine service till 1588, but after- 
wards transferred to secular purposes, " the Tower used 
as a prison, and the Nave for the Free Grammar- 
school." We must suppose that Shakespeare was sent 
to the Free School at Stratford, as his parents were 
unlearned persons, and there was no other public educa- 
tion available.2 

Under these circumstances, it becomes interesting to 
consider whether the chapel was used for school pur- 
poses in Shakespeare's time, and if so, whether there 
is any allusion to the subject in his works. It has 
been reasonably suggested that there may have been 
some temporary necessity for the practice, while the 
rooms above the Guildhall were being repaired or 
altered, and that this may perhaps have happened on 

^ Sonnet xxii. 

- References to Lilly's Grammar^ as used in such schools, are to be 
found in Titus Andronicus, iv. 2, 22-3, where Chiron, hearing- Demetrius 
read the lines from " Integ-er vitse," says :— 

" O, 'tis a verse in Horace ; I know it well : 
I read it in the g-rammar long ago." 
See also the amusing' catechism of the little scholar in Merry Wives of 
Windsor, iv. i. Two phrases are borrowed by Holofernes {Love's Labour s 
Lost, V. i) from Erasmus's Latin and English dialogues, composed for 
schoolboys; viz. " Priscian a little scratched" (11, 31-2) and "I smell 
false Latin" (1. 83). Erasmus's phrases are " Diminuit Prisciani caput" 
and " Barbariem olet." 



THE CHARTER OF 1553 103 

several distinct occasions. Mr. Neil, indeed, has gone 
so far as to suggest in his Home of Shakespeare that 
the poet may have seen Mr. Aspinall the vicar, or 
Mr. Thomas Jenkins the schoolmaster, teaching the 
grammar or sentences in Malvolio's costume : *' strange, 
stout, in yellow stockings, and cross-gartered." ''And 
cross-gartered?" "Most villainously; like a pedant 
that keeps a school i' the church . . . You have not 
seen such a thing as 'tis. I can hardly forbear hurling 
things at him."^ 

We need not examine minutely the transfer of pro- 
perty to the new Corporation. They got the Guild 
estate, including the lands left for the maintenance of 
the school, and the College estate carrying with it 
the Rectory of Stratford and the seven hamlets, the 
great tithes and a huge tithe-barn in Chapel Lane, and 
"altarages and oblations" and other ecclesiastical 
perquisites. It may, however, be useful to notice that 
there are several certificates among the Exchequer 
Records which describe the property in detail ; two of 
these are returns to Special Commissions in the nine- 
teenth year of Elizabeth, and relate to property at 
Luddington, Greenborough, Hardwick, and elsewhere, 
part of the possessions of the Stratford Guild ; and 
there are others made in the seventh or eighth years of 
James I., relating to the tithes and tithe-barn and to 
lands at Luddington and elsewhere which had formerly 
belonged to the College. It should be observed that 
the governing body established by Edward VI., about 
a fortnight before his death, was not headed by a 
Mayor as in ordinary cases. It was not till the re- 
newal of the charter in 1674 that Stratford had full 
local self-government under its own Mayor and Cor- 
poration. The Corporation as at first established was 
headed by the Bailiff, who was still in theory a servant 
of the lord of the borough, and was in fact responsible 

^ Twelfth Night, iii. 2, 79-87; see Neil, Home of Shakespeare, p. 34. 



104 STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

for the collection of quit-rents and maintenance of 
seignorial privileges. The lordship belonged to John 
Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, when the charter 
was first granted in 1553, but was forfeited to the 
Crown on his attainder a few weeks afterwards. 
Queen Mary gave up her rights to the Hospital of the 
Savoy, which had been suppressed at the end of the 
late reign. This Hospital, says Stow, was again new 
founded and endowed by Queen Mary ; and whereas 
the beds, bedding, and furniture had been given to the 
Bridewell workhouse, ''the Court Ladies," says the 
chronicler, "and Maids of Honour, in imitation of the 
Queen's charity, stored the Hospital anew with sufficient 
beds, bedding, and other furniture." ^ It was not long, 
however, before the lordship of the borough was vested 
once more in the Crown ; so that, when John Shake- 
speare was chosen as High Bailiff in 1568-9, he be- 
came not only a local official, but also a servant of the 
Queen. Without an explanation of the Bailiff's posi- 
tion, it would have been difficult to understand why 
Camden and Dethick, when granting the coat-of-arms 
in 1599, should have referred to the pattern of the 
arms assigned to him at Stratford ''whilest he was 
her Majestie's officer and baylefe of that towne."^ 

^ Stow, U.S., i. 236. 

^ See grant printed in Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., ii. 60-1. 




SNITTERFIELD, WILMCOTE, AND THE 
MANOR OF ROWINGTON 




SNITTERFIELD, WILMCOTE, AND THE 
MANOR OF ROWINGTON 



I 

JOHN SHAKESPEARE was the son of a yeoman 
living at Snitterfield,. a village lying a little to 
the north-east of Stratford, not far from Wilmcote.^ 
The parish appears to have belonged to the famous 
Turquil the Saxon, whose earldom and lands were 
bestowed by William Rufus on Henry de Newburgh, 
Earl of Warwick. His son, Earl Roger, who died in 
the reign of King Stephen, is said to have given a 
fourth part of all the arable lands and a right of feed- 
ing swine in the woods to the Collegiate Church of 
Warwick. The rest of the estate came down to one 
William Cummin, or Commin, who was described as 
Lord of Snitterfield in the time of King Henry H. 
His successor, Walter Commin, gave some of the 
land to the monastery of Bordesley. Dugdale traces 
the descent of the property, through an heiress of 
the Commins, to John de Cantilupe, who had a seat 
here described as "one knight's fee," of which the 
Earl of Warwick was the feudal lord. John de 
Cantilupe, however, had, as vassal, a complete title to 

^ See Dugdale, Anf. War., ed. Thomas, sub "Snitfield," ii. 661-4. 

107 



io8 SNITTERFIELD 

the estate, allowing for what had been given away to 
the church and monastery. The village became almost 
equal in dignity to a little town ; for John de Cantilupe 
is said to have procured a charter for a Wednesday 
market and a yearly fair, commencing July the 15th, 
on the eve, day, and morrow of the feast of St. Kenelm, 
the martyred King of Mercia. In the seventeenth year 
of Edward II., one Thomas West, who had married 
the heiress of Cantilupe, obtained another charter 
changing the market to Tuesday and ''enlarging the 
fair five days more after St. Kenelm." The estate 
afterwards passed under an exchange to William 
Beauchamp, Lord Abergavenny, and descended 
to his son Richard, Baron Abergavenny and Earl 
of Worcester. About the year 1490 it belonged to 
Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, who probably 
derived his title under an entail through his grand- 
mother, Anne Beauchamp, Countess of Warwick. He 
was beheaded in 1499 for high treason, and on his 
attainder this estate, among a number of others, known 
as "Warwick's Lands," became vested in King Henry 
VII. The property remained in the Crown, subject to 
various gifts, exchanges, and other transactions, until 
nearly the end of the next reign. Henry VIII. granted 
the manor of Snitterfield to Mr. Richard Morrison, 
a great dealer in abbey-lands and confiscated estates ; 
and among the records of the Court of Augmentations 
we find a request, dated June 15th, 1545, for leave to 
exchange for other lands the manor of Snitterfield, late 
of the Earl of Warwick, which had been appointed to 
Morrison by the King. The request being granted, 
the estate was conveyed by Morrison to Mr. John Hales 
of Coventry, Clerk of the Hanaper, a man of great 
wealth, who is chiefly remembered as the generous 
founder of the Free School at Coventry. He died on 
the 5th of January, 1572, in London, and was buried at 
the Church of St. Peter the Poor, in Broadstreet Ward, 



SHAKESPEARES OF SNITTERFIELD 109 

near Gresham House, where his learning and piety 
were commemorated ''on a faire ancient plate in the 
Wall North the Quire. "^ 

Nothing is known at present as to the date when the 
Shakespeares established themselves at Snitterfield ; 
but it may be worth observing that a certain Roger 
Shakespeare was one of the monks of Bordesley at the 
time when their monastery was suppressed ; and we 
have already noticed the statement that the monks had 
lands in this parish. This Roger Shakespeare must 
have been a person of some importance, since it appears 
that he was granted, by way of compensation, an 
annuity of "a hundred shillings for his life." It is 
clear that the best chance of ascertaining the lands given 
to Shakespeare's ancestor by Henry VII., to which the 
Heralds referred in their grant of arms, lies in an ex- 
amination of such of the records of " Warwick's Lands " 
as relate to the manor of Snitterfield. 

Mr. Hunter made diligent inquiries about all the 
Warwickshire families using the surname of Shake- 
speare, or other names substantially the same, though 
there may have been variations in the spelling. His 
instances are very numerous ; but we may sum them up 
by saying that he regarded Coventry as the home of the 
race, the family making offshoots into South Warwick- 
shire and the adjacent parts of Gloucestershire and 
Worcestershire. 2 The few examples from London, 
Derby, and Mansfield might be disregarded, in his 
opinion, as far as respects the principal argument. His 
attention was not turned to Snitterfield ; but he selects 
three branches of the stock with which, and with which 
alone, as he thought, the poet's ancestor might have 
been connected. These were, first, the Shakespeares 

^ Stow's Survey, ed. Strype, bk. 2, p. 113. 

- Halliwell-Phillipps, Otdlines, ii. 252, gives a long- list of Warwickshire 
towns and villages, in whose records the name of Shakespeare occurs 
between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. 



no SNITTERFIELD 

of Warwick, a series of persons living in that town 
from the end of the reign of Henry VIII. to the twenty- 
second year of James I. The head of the family was 
always named Thomas : there was a Thomas Shake- 
speare, gentleman, who was Bailiff of the town of 
Warwick in 1614 ; and another Thomas Shakespeare, 
a shoemaker in the same place, is believed to have been 
the father of William Shakespeare, who was drowned 
in the Avon in 1579, and of the John Shakespeare who 
followed the shoemaking trade at Stratford. This last 
Thomas Shakespeare made his will in 1577, by which 
it appeared that he held copyhold lands in the manor of 
Balsall in Warwickshire. Here it is important to observe 
that the Shakespeares of Warwick appear to have been 
related to the Shakespeares of Wroxall ; at any rate, 
John Shakespeare of Wroxall, by his will in 1574, 
selected " his cousin Laurence Shakespeare of Balshall " 
to be his executor. We may for the present disregard 
the Shakespeares of Rowington ; and we are left with 
the Shakespeares of Wroxall, from whom, in Mr. 
Hunter's opinion, the poet himself was descended. 
He was able indeed to bring forward very little in 
support of his theory, except that there was a well- 
known Richard Shakespeare of Wroxall, who might 
be the same person as Richard Shakespeare of Snitter- 
field.i 

We must now consider what is known about the stock 
selected by Mr. Hunter as ''the progenitors of the 
Shakespeares of Stratford." Wroxall - is a village in 
Warwickshire formerly belonging to a priory of Bene- 
dictine nuns, whose estate in this place was granted to 
Sir Robert Burgoine, when the monasteries were 
suppressed. There were curious legends about the 
foundation of this nunnery. It was said that the whole 
place had belonged to one Richard, a Norman, who 

^ Hunter, New Illustrations of the Life, etc., of Shakespeare, 1845, 
i. 10-13. ^ Dugdale, u.s., ii. 645-7, 649-50. 



WROXALL AND THE SHAKESPEARES iii 

was vassal to Henry, Earl of Warwick, soon after the 
Conquest. His son, Hugh Fitzrichard, the lord of the 
manor, being ''a person of great stature," joined the 
first Crusade ; who, having been taken prisoner in the 
Holy Land, '*so continued in great hardship there for 
the space of seven years " ; but, at length, by praying to 
St. Leonard, to whom the church was dedicated, was 
taken up with his chains on him and set down in a 
wood in this his lordship of Wroxall ; where when he 
found himself, he remembered St. Leonard's injunction 
given him in two apparitions while he was in prison, 
that he should build a monastery of St. Benet's Order, 
and accordingly made directions where to build it, and, 
having erected it, made two of his daughters nuns in 
it. Whatever might be the origin of the legend, it 
appears that some person of that name gave the nuns 
''the whole manor with a quantity of lands and woods," 
and that many other benefactions of the same kind were 
added '' by persons of quality and of inferior condition." 
The court-rolls of the manor of Wroxall do not throw 
much light upon the matter. There is an entry for the 
year 1508, near the close of the reign of Henry VH., 
relating to a manorial court held by Isabella Shake- 
spere, prioress, and lady of the manor : '' To this court 
came John Shakespere, and took of the said lady a 
messuage with three crofts and a grove in Cross-field 
at Wroxhall, to hold the same to the said John and 
Ellen his wife, and Antony their son, according to the 
custom of the manor, at a rent of ijs. 2d., and a heriot 
on death or withdrawal, and for a fine upon entry he 
gave two capons, and was admitted, and did fealty." 
Under the year 1531 we find entries showing that John 
Shakespere had died, and that his widow, then called 
Ellen Baker, and her son Antony Shakespeare sur- 
rendered the property just above described to the use 
of John Rabon, who had become the purchaser. At 
the same court it was presented that Alice Love had 



112 SNITTERFIELD 

surrendered out of court a property consisting of five 
crofts at Wroxall, for which a black cow had been 
seized for the lady as a heriot, and that now in court 
came one William Shakespere and Agnes his wife, and 
took the same five crofts for a customary estate at a 
rent of ioj-., with a heriot, and fine for entry, and so 
forth. The name of Richard Shakespere occurs in the 
list of jurymen at this court, and also at the court of 
1532. It appears by the minister's accounts, preserved 
in the Augmentation Office, and by the Valor Ecclesi- 
asticus of 1534, that this Richard Shakespeare was 
bailiff to the nuns at a salary of Aps. a year, and that 
he held a copyhold cottage, besides certain leasehold 
lands, in their manor of Wroxall. Mr. Hunter shows 
by extracts from the Subsidy Rolls that he was dead 
before the year 1546. It may also be observed that 
there was a Guild of St. Anne in the college of priests 
at Knowle, near Hampton-in-Arden, founded under a 
licence from King Henry IV., "to which so many 
persons, and those many of them of quality, were 
admitted, that it maintained by their benefactions 
three priests continually singing."^ The register of 
this Guild for the period between 1460 and 1527 shows 
that several of these gifts had been made by the 
Shakespeares of Wroxall, the names of the Lady 
prioress Isabel, and of Richard, John, and William 
Shakespeare being specially kept in remembrance. 
But, so far as the inquiries have as yet proceeded, it 
cannot be said that there is any evidence of the poet's 
ancestors having come from Wroxall. 

All that seems to be really known about Richard 
Shakespeare of Snitterfield is that he was a franklin, or 
yeoman, with land of his own, with another farm held 
on lease from Robert Arden of Wilmcote, and that he 
had two sons called Henry and John. Henry, as the 
elder son, succeeded to his father's land and remained 

^ Dugdale, u.s., ii. 959-60. 



FARMING IN ENGLAND 113 

in business as a farmer ; John, as we know, preferred 
to take up a trade, and moved about the year 1551 into 
a shop at Stratford-upon-Avon. 



II 

Sir Thomas Overbury^ drew an excellent picture of 
an English yeoman of his time, who "says not to his 
servants, ^ Go to field,' but 'Let us go'; and with his 
own eye doth both fatten his flock and set forward all 
manner of husbandry. . . . He never sits up late but 
when he hunts the badger, the vowed foe of his lambs ; 
nor uses he any cruelty but when he hunts the hare ; 
nor subtilty but when he setteth snares for the snipe or 
pitfalls for the blackbird ; nor oppression but when, in 
the month of July, he goes to the next river and shears 
his sheep. He allows of honest pastime, and thinks 
not the bones of the dead anything bruised or the worse 
for it though the country lasses dance in the church- 
yard after evensong. Rock Monday, and the wake in 
summer, Shrovings, the wakeful catches on Christmas 
Eve, the hockey or seed-cake, these he yearly keeps, 
yet holds them no relics of popery. He is not so in- 
quisitive after news derived from the privy closet, when 
the finding an eyry of hawks in his own ground, or the 
foaling of a colt come of a good strain, are tidings more 
pleasant, more profitable. . . . Lastly, to end him, he 
cares not when his end comes, he needs not fear his 
audit, for his quietus is in heaven." 

Farming at the beginning of the sixteenth century 
was in an extremely prosperous condition, wherever 
the land had been freed from "the miseries of common- 
field." If the farmer was allowed to adopt a mixed 
husbandry, with a little arable, something of a dairy, 

^ Characters; or, Witty Descriptions of the Properties of Sundry 
Persons (1614) in Character Writings of the I'jth Cetitiiry, ed. Henry 
Morley, 1891, pp. 87-8, under heading " A Franklin." 
I 



114 WILMCOTE 

and separate inclosures for cattle and sheep, he was 
able to get a profit out of the great rise in prices. The 
influx of the precious metals from America had altered 
the prices offered for hides and wool in a surprising 
degree. Some saw only the uncomfortable side of 
affairs, and lamented the terrible prices caused by the 
depreciation of gold and silver. Strype quotes a com- 
plaint of this kind from a tract called The Jewel of Joy. 
" How swarme they with aboundaunce flockes of shepe, 
and yet when was wooll ever so dere, or mutton of so 
great pryce. Oh what a diversitie is thys in the sale 
of wolles, a stone of woU sometime to be sold at eight 
grots, and now for eight shillings, and so likewise of 
the shepe, God have mercy on us ! "^ We should notice 
too that a farmer and his sons, if allowed to have 
" several " or separate fields, could effect a great saving 
under the head of labour. Fitzherbert, in his treatise 
upon Husbandry, reckons up some of the charges, 
when a farm lay open with all the rest of the parish : 
" The herdman will have for every beast ii.d. a quarter, 
or there about : And the swineherd will have for every 
swine i.d. at the least. Then he must have a shepherd 
of his own, or else he shall never thrive. Then reckon 
meat, drink, and wages for his shepherd, the herd- 
man's hire, and the swine-herd's hire, these charges 
will double his rent or nigh it, except his farm be above 
xl.s. by year. "2 And besides all this, he remarks that 
an inclosed farm can be constantly watched, for a man 
always wandering about finds what is amiss. As soon 
as he sees the defaults he can note them in his table- 
book, "and if he can not write, let him nick the 
defaults upon a stick. "^ 

Holinshed used to talk to old men who remembered 
the farmers sleeping on straw pallets, with a good 

■' The Jewel of Joye, 1553, sig. G, iii. , back. 

^ Fitzherbert, Book of Husbandry, ed. Skeat, 1882 (English Dialect 
Society), § 123, p. 77. '^ Id.,l 141, pp. 91-2. 



HISTORY OF THE HAMLET 115 

round log for a bolster, using wooden platters and 
spoons, and yet hardly able to pay their rent; but, when 
he wrote his description of England, a good farmer 
would have six or seven years' rent lying by, to pur- 
chase a new lease, with a "fair garnish of pewter" on 
his side-table or "cupboard," three or four feather- 
beds, as many coverlets and carpets of tapestry, a 
silver salt-cellar, "a bowl for wine (if not an whole 
nest), and a dozen of spoons, to furnish up the suit."^ 
These statements are borne out by what we are told 
of the household of Robert Arden, Wilmcote," where 
his homestead and most of his lands were situated, 
was a hamlet of the parish of Aston Cantlow ; for 
some purposes of petty jurisdiction it was a member 
of the Liberty of Pathlow, for which the Bishops of 
Worcester formerly held courts at a barrow by the 
roadside beyond Stratford. ^ Most of the hamlet be- 
longed to the Clopton family. Lord Mayor Clopton 
having purchased the manor in the reign of Henry 
Vn. The church, or rather the chapel of ease, was 
dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen ; * and it had been 
conveyed to the Stratford Guild, while Thomas Clop- 
ton was Warden. The ancient title of " Wilmunde- 
cote " probably indicates the name of the thane, serving 
a King of Mercia or a Bishop of Worcester, who had 
first made the clearing in the forest. Shortly before 
the Norman Conquest, one Lewin Dodda worked the 
estate with the help of two farmers and a couple of 
slaves. Domesday Book shows that no alteration was 
made at the Conquest in the way of laying out the 
estate. The new lord of the manor, Urso d'Habetot, 
two farmers, two cottagers, and two bondsmen, held 
among them sixteen "yardlands" in the arable fields, 

^ Holinshed, "Description of England," part ii. chap. x. (in Chronicles, 
vol. i., 1577, pp. 85-6). 

2 Dugdale, u.s., ii. 838. ^ Vid. sup., p. 64. 

■* The modern church is dedicated to St. Andrew. 



ii6 WILMCOTE 

and a few acres of water-meadow, besides woodland 
and waste. As time went on the manor became 
divided between the families of co-heiresses : one part 
came to a certain Robert de Vale, and another to 
Ralph de Lodington, who owned two of the eight 
freehold '' yardlands" and five of the eight copyhold 
yardlands, then in the occupation of his customary 
tenants. Nearly the whole estate became united again 
in an heiress who married Henry de Lisle, from whom 
the Clopton family derived their title. But, at the 
time of which we are now speaking, Robert Arden, 
the father of Mary Shakespeare, was the owner of one 
of the freehold portions and tenant of one of the copy- 
hold portions, besides certain separate fields and the 
usual rights of common. The freehold portion con- 
sisted of about thirty acres of land scattered about in 
little strips through the three common fields, with a 
farmhouse, homestead, and other inclosures, with con- 
veniences and privileges, known collectively as Asbies 
Farm, or simply as "Asbies." He was also the owner 
of lands at Snitterfield, rented by Richard Shake- 
speare, as mentioned above ; and Mr. Halliwell- 
Phillipps discovered evidence showing that he had 
also purchased some interest in a property then called 
Warde Barnes, near Wilmcote. 

Robert Arden was twice married. By his first wife 
he appears to have had four daughters, of whom one 
married Mr. Edmund Lambert of Barton-on-the-Heath, 
the two younger children, Alice and Mary, being un- 
married at his death, as appears by the provisions of 
his will. His second wife was Agnes Hill, a widow,^ 
formerly Agnes Webb, for whose benefit he secured 
a jointure out of the lands at Snitterfield. 

1 Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., ii. 368-9, gives a copy of her first husband's 
will. He was John Hill, of Bearley, four miles N.N.E. of Stratford. 
" Item, I give unto Agnes, my wife, the lease of my farm in Bearley 
during her life, and after her decease John, my son, to have it." 



ROBERT ARDEN'S FARM OF ASBIES 117 

In the treatise upon Husbandry, to which reference 
has already been made, we find several passages that 
describe the domestic life on farms of this kind. We 
confine ourselves here to the work which would usually 
fall upon the farmer's wife and daughters. ''When 
thou art up and ready, then first sweep thy house," 
says Fitzherbert, addressing the industrious housewife, 
"dress up thy dishboard, and set all things in good 
order within thy house." She is then to milk the cows, 
feed the calves, skim the milk, and so on, before 
"arraying" the children, and getting the meals ready 
for the household.^ We may notice that the Ardens 
kept seven cows, and that at Robert's death he had 
eight oxen for the plough, two bullocks, and four wean- 
ing calves, intended "to uphold the stock. "^ The 
list of the housewives' duties includes putting aside the 
corn and malt for the miller, and measuring it before 
it goes to the mill and after it returns, and seeing that 
the measures duly correspond, allowing for the toll, 
"or else the miller dealeth not truly with thee, or else 
the corn is not dry as it should be."^ Then comes the 
making of butter and cheese, and serving of pigs 
twice a day and the poultry once ; and when the 
proper time comes, the housewife must "take heed 
how thy hens, ducks, and geese do lay, and to gather 
up their eggs, and when they wax broody, to set them 
there as no beasts, swine, nor other vermin hurt them. 
. . . And when they have brought forth their birds, 
to see that they be well kept from the gledes, crows, 
foulmarts, and other vermin.""^ About March, or a 
little before, it is time for the wife to make her garden, 
not forgetting to keep it free from weeds, and to plant 
the flax and hemp ; the flax and hemp, as every house- 

^ Fitzherbert, u.s., § 146, p. 95. 

^ See Inventory of Robert Arden's goods, 1556, in Halliwell-Phillipps, 
zcs., ii. 53-4. ^ Fitzherbert, u.s. 

* Fitzherbert writes "gleyds," " fuUymarts," u.s., p. 96. 



ii8 WILMCOTE 

wife well knew, had to be sown, weeded, pulled, re- 
peeled, watered, washed, dried, beaten, braked, tawed, 
heckled, spun, wound, wrapped, and woven; "and 
thereof may they make sheets, boardcloths, towels, 
shirts, smocks, and such other necessaries, and there- 
fore let thy distaff be alway ready for a pastime, that 
thou be not idle. And undoubted a woman cannot get 
her living honestly with spinning on the distaff, but 
it stoppeth a gap, and must needs be had."i He ac- 
knowledges, indeed, that it might sometimes happen 
that the housewife had so many things to do that she 
could hardly know where to begin. She had, for 
instance, to make coats and gowns for her husband 
and herself.^ It is convenient, says Fitzherbert, for 
the husbandman to have sheep of his own, and in the 
instance before us fifty-two sheep w^e kept on the 
farm. "Then may his wife have part of the wool, to 
make her husband and herself some clothes. And at 
the least way, she may have the locks of the sheep, either 
to make clothes or blankets and coverlets, or both. 
And if she have no wool of her own she may take 
wool to spin of clothmakers, and by that means she 
may have a convenient living, and many times to do 
other works." There follows a terrible list of extra 
duties. It is a wife's occupation, we are told, to winnow 
the corn, to make malt, to wash and wring, to make 
hay, reap corn, "and in time of need to help her 
husband to fill the muck-wain . . . drive the plough, to 
load hay, corn, and such other," besides walking or 
riding to market to sell "butter, cheese, milk, eggs, 
chickens, capons, hens, pigs, geese, and all manner of 
corns." 

^ Fitzherbert, ibid. - Id., p. 98, with the two quotations followitigf. 



ROBERT ARDEN'S WILL 119 



III 

Robert Arden's will was dated the 24th of November, 
1556, and he died about the beginning of the following 
month, the inventory of his goods ''moveable and un- 
moveable," taken by his daughters Alice and Mary, 
bearing date the 9th of December in the same year. 
He left his soul to Almighty God and the Saints, as 
mentioned above, and his body to be buried in the 
churchyard of St. John the Baptist in Aston ; in an- 
other part of the will he appointed certain friends to 
"over-see" its execution.^ The details acquire a cer- 
tain interest from the lines in Lucrece^ which suggest 
the idea that Shakespeare was familiar with the phras- 
ing of his grandfather's will. Thus Lucrece exclaims : 

" This brief abridgment of my will I make : 
My soul and body to the skies and ground ; 
My resolution, husband, do thou take ; 
Mine honour be the knife's that makes my wound. "^ 

and (1. 1205) "Thou, Collatine, shalt oversee this will." 
The gift to his daughter Mary was as follows, the 
spelling being modernised: "Also I give and bequeath 
to my youngest daughter Mary all my land in Wilmcote 
called Asbies, and the crop upon the ground, sown and 
tilled as it is, and £6. 13. 4 of money, to be paid or ere 
my goods be divided." It appeared, by the proceed- 
ings in the subsequent Chancery suit, that this little 
estate consisted of a farmhouse and farm, comprising a 
yard-land of about fifty acres in the common fields, with 
four odd acres over, and certain rights of pasture. The 
testator left his wife the sum of £,^. 13. 4, upon con- 
dition that she allowed his daughter to share the copy- 
hold yard-land at Wilmcote, to which the widow was 
entitled during her life, according to the custom of 

■^ "Adam Palmer, Hugh Porter of Snytterfylde, and Jhon Skerlett." 
^ Lucrece, 11. 1198-1201. 



I20 WILMCOTE 

the manor; and he continued, "if she will not suffer 
my daughter Alice quietly to occupy half with her, 
then I will that my wife shall have but £2,. 6. 8, and 
her jointure in Snitterfield." His other bequest to Alice 
Arden ran as follows: "I give and bequeath to my 
daughter Alice the third part of all my goods, move- 
able and unmoveable, in field and town, after my debts 
and legacies be performed, besides that good she hath 
of her own at this time." There were gifts of groats 
"to every house that hath no team in the Parish of 
Aston," and twenty shillings apiece to his "over-seers." 
The residue of his goods he left to his children other 
than Alice, to be divided equally. He appointed his 
daughters Alice and Mary to be his "full executors" ; 
and the will was witnessed by ' ' Sir William Boughton "^ 
the curate, Adam Palmer, John Scarlet, Thomas Jenks, 
William Pitt, and others. 

The inventory^ taken immediately after his death is 
interesting as showing the way of living in a yeoman's 
family, and as describing the actual goods in which 
Mary Shakespeare had a share. She was married to 
John Shakespeare a short time afterwards, and may be 
supposed to have taken her furniture with her to the 
new house in Stratford. Arden's house contained a 
hall or parlour, a kitchen, a great chamber, and pos- 
sibly other small rooms. In the hall were two dining- 
tables, or table-boards, and a sideboard, three chairs, 
two forms with cushions, three benches, and a little 
table with shelves. The great chamber contained the 
household linen, stored in coffers, including seven pairs 
of sheets, and a few table-cloths and towels, bedsteads 
and bedding, among which may be noticed a feather 
bed with coverlet and pillow, two mattresses, three 
bolsters, and eight "canvasses"; and there were no 
doubt articles of clothing and necessary use which 
belonged to other members of the family. In the " 

^ In the will " Borton." ^ ggg p_ jjy^ ^^^^ 2, 



INVENTORY OF ARDEN'S GOODS 121 

kitchen, beside the usual pots and pans and domestic 
ware, we may notice the pair of cupboards, a churn 
and four milkpails, and a kneading-trough. A hus- 
bandman, says Fitzherbert, ought to have an axe, a 
hatchet, a hedging-bill, a pin-auger, a rest-auger, a 
flail, a spade, and a shovel ;^ ajid we find that Robert 
Arden had an axe, bill, two hatchets, an adze, a mat- 
tock and iron crow, a longsaw, a handsaw, and "four 
nagares," or augers, as they are properly called. The 
horned cattle were valued at ^^24, and four horses, with 
three colts, at ;^8. The flock of fifty-two sheep was 
worth £"]. The pigs were taken at nearly 3^. apiece, ^ 
and the bees and poultry together at a crown. The 
stackyard and barns contained wheat, barley, hay, 
peas, oats, and straw, worth together £21. 6. 8. The 
cart and plough with their gear, and the harrows, stood 
at £2. The wood in the yard and the battens in the 
roof were priced at 30J. ; the value of the wheat in the 
ground was taken at £^. 13. 4, and the whole valua- 
tion came to the sum of ;^77. 11. 10. It should be 
stated, moreover, that the list included no less than 
eleven of the " painted cloths," which took the place of 
tapestry in families of the middle class, though they 
began to be superseded during Shakespeare's lifetime 
by the more elegant panels in water-colour. '' For thy 
walls," says Falstaff, "a pretty slight drollery, or the 
story of the Prodigal, or the German hunting in water- 
work, is worth a thousand of these bed-hangings and 
these fly-bitten tapestries."^ These painted cloths 
appear to have been rude representations of classical 
or religious subjects, with explanatory verses below. 
**You are full of pretty answers," said Jaques, in As 
You Like It. "Have you not been acquainted with 

^ Fitzherbert, u.s.., §5, pp. H-'tS- 

^ "ix swyne, prisid at xxvis. viijd." 

3 2 Henry IV., ii. i, 156-9. Cf. Beaumont and Fletcher, Knight of the 
Burning Pestle, iii. 5, "What story is that painted on the cloth? the 
confutation of St. Paul?" 



122 WILMCOTE 

goldsmiths' wives, and conned them out of rings?" 
" Not so," answered Orlando, " but I answer you right 
painted cloth, from whence you have studied your 
questions." 1 

It is to be supposed that the great chamber in Arden's 
house contained some of those "fly-bitten tapestries." 
Agnes Arden, as we know, continued to live at the 
farm, and evidently had a share of the furniture ; for in 
the inventory of her goods made in 1581,^ we find a 
mention of bed-steads with '' apreeware," i.e. ware or 
needle-work of Ypres, standing in the upper rooms. It 
may be observed also that the same inventory contains 
a valuation of the table-boards, a sideboard, shelves, 
cushions, forms, and benches, which, by their descrip- 
tion and value, seem to be the same as those mentioned 
in Robert Arden's will. Mrs. Arden had only one of 
the painted cloths ; and it may therefore be assumed that 
the rest were divided between Mary Shakespeare and 
her sisters, in accordance with the provisions of their 
father's will. This may account in some degree for 
Shakespeare's constant reference to objects of this kind, 
as in Macbeth for instance, where we hear of the 
''eye of childhood that fears a painted devil, "^ or as 
when Falstaff marched his ragged regiment to Sutton 
Coldfield, and compared them to "Lazarus in the 
painted cloth, where the glutton's dogs licked his sores. "* 
Other references to pictures of this class may be found 
in some of the numerous descriptions of Hercules, and 
perhaps in Pistol's garbled allusion to a classical story 
in the words, "Sir Act^eon, with Ringwood at thy 
heels." ^ The most striking reference is to be found in 
the poem of Lucrece, where the lady looks on the face 
of despairing Hecuba in the picture of the taking of 

1 As You Like It, iii. 2, 287-92. 

^ Printed in Halliwell-Piiillipps, u.s., ii. 55. 

* Macbeth, ii. 2, 54-5. * i Henry IV., iv. 2, 27-9. 

^ Merry Wives of Windsor, ii. i, 122. 



THE PAINTED CLOTHS AT ASBIES 123 

Troy ; 1 to a thousand lamentable objects ''a lifeless 
life " was given and ''the red blood reeked, to show the 
painter's strife " : — 

"There might you see the labouring- pioneer 

Begrimed with sweat, and smeared all with dust ; 
And from the towers of Troy there would appear 
The very eyes of men through loopholes thrust, 
Gazing upon the Greeks with little lust : 

Such sweet observance in this work was had, 
That one might see those far-off eyes look sad." ^ 



We may pause here for a moment to notice Shake- 
speare's own fondness for the village where his mother 
was born. There was some local tradition that he used 
to go down to the old mill at Wilmcote to talk with a 
half-witted fellow, or natural fool, who was employed 
there in some menial capacity. He might have been 
pleased no doubt to meet "a fool in the Forest" ; but 
there is no evidence that the legend was true.^ We 
observe, however, that he goes out of his way on more 
than one occasion to bring little points about Wilmcote 
before his London audience. Take, for instance, his 
alterations of the Induction to The Taming of the Shrew. 
There was an odd kind of village constable, represent- 
ing the system of keeping the peace that prevailed 
before the Norman Conquest, with titles that varied in 
different parts of the country. In Kent and Essex he 
was called the Borsholder, which seems to be derived 
from " borrows-elder " ; and in one of the rural bor- 
rows or tithings there was a staff with an iron ring 
called "the dumb Borsholder," appearing in court 
by the help of the village blacksmith, whose duty it 

1 Lucrece, 11. 1 366-1442. ^ Ibid,, 11. 1380-6. 

^ Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., i. 233. For evidence see illustrative note, id., 
ii. 308. 



124 WILMCOTE 

was to lift the staff in the air. In many parts he was 
known as the Headborough, and elsewhere as the 
Tithing-man : and we may remember how poor Tom 
in K'tng Lear wsLS whipped "from tithing to tithing," 
and put in the stocks by these rural officers. ^ It appeared 
by a trial in the Exchequer, about the middle of the 
last century, that the duties of the Tithing-man at Dray- 
cot, in Wiltshire, were divided between himself and his 
dog. The holder of a certain farm had to undertake the 
office and attend the court with his trusty companion : 
"and when he is called, and is asked how he appears, 
he answers 'My dog and I appears,' and produces the 
dog." The Tithing-man of Coombe Keynes in Dorset 
came into the court of Winfrith Hundred, and paid 
threepence with an incoherent speech beginning, "with 
my white rod, and I am a fourth post ; that threepence 
makes three." ^ In the neighbourhood of Stratford the 
officer was called a ' ' Tharborough, "or " Thirdborough, " 
which is evidently a corruption of "the headborough." 
Shakespeare seems to have felt some amusement at the 
title and duties of the office. "I am his Grace's 
Tharborough,"^ says good Antony Dull, "a man of 
good repute, carriage, bearing, and estimation."^ He 
was not of much account among the wits of Lovers 
Labour's Lost. He spoke not a word, " nor understood 
none, neither. Sir ! "^ But dull, honest Dull was a great 
man when he took his place among the lads of the 
village ; " I'll make one in a dance, or so ; or I will play 
on the tabor to the Worthies and let them dance the 
Hay ! " ^ Then there is the scene between the drunken 

■* King Lear, iii. 4, 139-41. 

- Hutchins, History of Dorset, i. 127 : " On default of any one of these 
particulars, the court-leet of Coombe is forfeited." The remaining lines 
are :— 

" God bless the king and the lord of the franchise. 
Our weights and our measures are lawful and true, 
Good morrow, Mr. Steward, I have no more to say to you." 
* Love s Labour s Lost, i. i, 185. ^ Ibid., 271-2. 

5 Id.,v. I, 158. ^ Ibid., 160-1. 



THE HEADBOROUGH 125 

tinker and fat Marian Hacket at her ale-house on 
Wilmcote Heath. She wants to be paid for her glasses, 
and she can only get monnaie de singe, or cold scraps 
from The Spanish Tragedy. '*I know my remedy, I 
must go fetch the third-borough," cries old Marian ; 
''Third or fourth or fifth borough, I'll answer him by 
law : I'll not budge an inch, boy : let him come, and 
kindly," says Christopher Sly. ^ The story of the 
beggar transformed had nothing to do with Warwick- 
shire, and is in fact as old as the Arabian Nights or the 
"golden prime" of Haroun Alraschid. Robert Burton 
was a schoolboy at Sutton Coldfield,^ and served as 
curate in several Warwickshire parishes ; he was a 
great lover of the theatre and loved Shakespeare "as 
an elegant poet " ; ^ but Burton tells the tinker's story 
out of Ludovic Vives and H enter 's History of Burgundy. 
Ludovic Vives was well known in England, but spent the 
latter part of his life as a Professor of the Belles Lettres 
at Bruges ; and he may have located the story in his 
adopted country, just as Shakespeare in the following 
generation found room for it at his favourite Wilmcote. 
The continental version thus appears in the Anatomy 
of Melancholy.'^ When ^^ Philippus Bonus, that Good 
Duke of Burgundy," went to Bruges to attend the 
wedding of Leonora of Portugal, the wintry weather was 
so bad, as the chroniclers say, that he could find no means 

^ TaTning of the Shrew, Induction, i, 11-15. 

^ Anai. of Mel., ii. sect. ii. mem. iii, (ed. Shilleto, ii. 73): '^ Stifton 
Coldfield in Warwickshire (where I was once a Grammar Scholar) may 
be a sufficient witness, which stands, as Camden notes, loco ingrato et 
sterili, but in an excellent air, and full of all manner of pleasures." See 
Camden, Britannia, tr. Holland, 1610, p. 567 B, ^'■Suttoti Colfeild, stand- 
ings in a woddy and on a churlish hard soile, glorieth of John Voisy 
Bishop of Excester there born and bred ; who in the reigne of King 
Henrie the Eighth, when this little town had lien a great while as dead, 
raised it up againe with buildings, priviledges, and a Grammar schoole." 

" Anat. of Mel,, iii. sect. ii. mem. ii. subs. ii. (u.s., iii. 79): "When Venus 
ran to meet her rose-cheeked Adonis, as an elegant Poet of ours sets her 
out." 

* Id., part ii. sect. ii. mem. iv. {u.s., ii. 99). 



126 WILMCOTE 

of amusement. Hawking and hunting were forbidden by 
the snow, and the Duke was "tired with cards, dice, 
&c., and such other domestical sports, or to see Ladies 
dance." He would therefore disguise himself with 
certain of his courtiers and look for adventures about 
the town. " It so fortuned, as he was walking late one 
night, that he found a country-fellow dead-drunk, snort- 
ing on a bulk ; ^ he caused his followers to bring him. 
to his Palace, and there stripped him of his old clothes, 
and attiring him after the Court fashion, when he waked, 
he and they were ready to attend upon his Excellency, 
persuading him he was some great Duke. The poor 
fellow, admiring how he came there, was served in 
state all the day long ; after supper he saw them 
dance, heard Musick, and the rest of those Court-like 
pleasures : but late at night, when he was well tippled, 
and again fast asleep, they put on his old robes, and so 
conveyed him to the place where they first found him," 
etc. 

" What's here? one dead, or drunk?" says the lord 
at the hedge-corner on Wilmcote Heath : ^ 

" Sirs, I will practise on this drunken man ; 
What think you, if he were convey'd to bed, 
Wrapp'd in sweet clothes, rings put upon his fingers, 
A most delicious banquet by his bed, 
And brave attendants near him when he wakes, 
Would not the beggar then forget himself? " ^ 

Then begins the scene in the bed-chamber.* " Will't 
please your lordship drink a cup of sack?" "What 
raiment will your honour wear to-day?" says another, 
dressed up as a servant. "I am Christophero Sly: 
call not me ' honour ' nor ' lordship.' " We may 
notice Shakespeare's fondness for putting the old law- 

^ Shilleto notes, u.s., " Bulk here is probably a bench." 

^ Taming of the Shrew, u.s., 1. 31. 

^ Ibid., 11. 36-41, •• Id., sc. 2. 



STORY OF CHRISTOPHER SLY 127 

phrases into the mouth of a ruffian like Sly or Jack 
Cade. 

"Am I not Christopher Sly, old Sly's son of Burton- 
heath, by birth a pedler, by education a cardmaker, by 
transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profes- 
sion a tinker ? Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of 
Wincot, if she know me not : if she say I am not four- 
teen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for 
the lying-est knave in Christendom. "^ 

At last he is persuaded that he has been befooled by 
some strange lunacy.^ 

" Upon my life I am a lord indeed. 
And not a tinker nor Christophero Sly." 

*'0 how we joy," says the servant with basin and 
napkin, 

" to see your wit restor'd! 
O that once more you knew but what you are ! " 

and the chief player tells him about the ale in stone 
jugs and threats of presentment at the leet. ''Some- 
times you would call out for Cicely Hacket." "Ay, 
the woman's maid of the house," returns the tinker. 
" But then," cries another, 

" Why, sir, you know no house nor no such maid, 
Nor no such men as you have reckoned up. 
As Stephen Sly and old John Naps of Greece 
And Peter Turph and Henry Pimpernell 
And twenty more such names and men as these 
Which never were nor no man ever saw. "^ 

The name of Stephen Sly was a reminiscence of 
Stratford. It was borne by a very respectable towns- 
man, once servant to Mr. Combe, and afterwards a 
householder on his own account. He took a promi- 
nent part in resisting the inclosure at Welcombe, to 
which Shakespeare himself raised a successful objec- 

^ Ibid., 18-26. 2 Ihid., 74 et seqq. 

3 Ihid,, 93-8. 



128 WILMCOTE 

tion.^ It was quite in accordance with the poet's habit 
to introduce a real name, by way of a jest reminding 
him of home. " Naps of Greece " is a name that may 
refer to some hill-farm, where a "knapp," or knoll, 
was mounted by steps, or 'Agrees" ; but the other per- 
sonages appear to be altogether imaginary. We ought 
to compare the passage with the list of prisoners in 
Measure for Measure^ headed by young Master Rash 
and Mr. Caper in his peach-coloured satin : — 

"Then we have young Dizy, and young Master Deep- 
vow, and Master Copperspur, and Master Starvelackey 
the rapier and dagger man, and young Drop-heir that 
killed lusty Pudding, and Master Forthlight the tilter, 
and brave Master Shooty the great traveller, and wild 
Half-can that stabbed Pots, and I think forty more."^ 

Brave Shooty (Shoe-tie) surely must have been Tom 
Coryat, who wrote the book of "Crudities hastily 
gobled up in 5 moneth travells newly digested in the 
hungry air of Odcombe," and hung up his only pair of 
shoes as a trophy at Odcombe Church in Somerset ; 
and there may have been one or two other personal 
allusions that might be caught up by a London audience. 
We catch another glimpse of the Wilmcote people in 
the second part of King Henry IV. The scene is laid 
at Shallow's house in Gloucestershire, but the allusions 
point to the neighbourhood of Stratford. ^ 

Davy. " I beseech you, sir, to countenance William Visor 
of Woncot against Clement Perkes of the hill. 

Shal. There is many complaints, Davy, against that Visor : 
that Visor is an arrant knave, on my knowledge. 

Davy. I grant your worship that he is a knave, sir ; but yet, 
God forbid, sir, but a knave should have some countenance 
at his friend's request." 

^ Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., ii. 308. 

^ Measure for Measure, iv. 3, 14-21. ^ 2 Henry IV., v. i, 41-9. 



MANOR OF ROWINGTON 129 



V 

The manor of Rowington has belonged to the Crown 
ever since the death of Ambrose Dudley, Earl of War- 
wick. Queen Elizabeth had entailed the place upon 
her favourite;^ but he died without issue in 1589, and 
so the entail was at an end. The ancient manor had 
been confined to the parish of Rowington, which lies 
at some distance from Stratford.^ It was the pro- 
perty of the Abbey of Reading, to which house also 
belonged a large farm at Tiddington, lying south of 
the Avon on the Banbury road, some little bits of land 
in Stratford itself, and an estate in Leicestershire called 
Everkeston, which all passed together under the name 
of the manor of Rowington at the time when Shake- 
speare became a tenant. Lord Coke once explained 
how it often happened, *'in the time of the Abbots," 
that, for the sake of convenience, one court was held 
for several neighbouring properties, and a number of 
detached parcels were treated as being in one manor, 
for the sake of simplicity in the accounts. A survey of 
the manor of Rowington, in this extended sense of the 
term, was taken at the accession of James L, and there 
is also among the Public Records a document entitled, 
**A Survey of the Manor of Rowington ... in the 
County of Warwick, late parcel of the possessions of 
Henrietta Maria, the relict and late Queen of Charles 
Stuart, deceased." We shall make extracts from both 

^ See Camden, Britannia, xi.s., p. 571 A.B.: '■'■Ambrose, a most worthy- 
personage, both for warlike prowesse and sweetnesse of nature, through 
the fauour of Queene Elizabeth received in our remembrance, the honour 
of Earle of Warwiche to him and his heires males, and for defect of them 
to Robert his brother, and the heires males of his body lawfully begotten. 
This honour Ambrose bare with great commendation, and died without 
children in the yeere one thousand fiue hundred eighty nine, shortly after 
his brother Robert Earle of Leicester." 

2 Dugdale, ti.s., ii. 793-4. Rowington is about six miles N. N.W. of 
Warwick, on the main road to Birmingham, and is in the Henley 
division of Barlichway Hundred. 
K 



I30 MANOR OF ROWINGTON 

these documents, with respect to the customs prevailing 
in Shakespeare's time, and with respect also to certain 
properties, other than his copyhold, that belonged to 
various persons of the same name. 

As to the parish of Rowington itself, all the Abbey- 
lands belonged to permanent tenants, either freeholders 
by ancient right, or customary tenants holding "to 
them and theirs " in a security hardly inferior to free- 
hold. They paid among them about £^2 of perpetual 
rent. The Leicestershire tenants paid £6. 13^-. ^d., and 
the two little copyholds in the borough of Stratford 
were assessed at 4-r. 6d. These small holdings are thus 
described in the earlier survey: "Customary rents in 
Stratford, parcel of the said manor : Stephen Burman 
holdeth . . . according to the custom one messuage 
and one orchard, by estimation half an acre, and payeth 
rent yearly two shillings. William Shakespeare hold- 
eth there one cottage and a garden, by estimation a 
quarter of an acre, and payeth rent yearly two shillings 
and sixpence." Now as to the other Shakespeares, 
who seem to have been in no way related to the poet.^ 
Thomas Shakespeare of Rowington is the freeholder of 
a house and yard-land, about thirty-two acres in all, 
and is also the customary tenant of a field, and the 
site of an old house and sixteen acres that went with 
it, and another copyhold house and yard-land of eleven 
acres. George Shakespeare, his brother, as it seems, 
had a cottage and a couple of acres, worth 2^. a year. 
Richard Shakespeare had a messuage, and half a yard- 
land containing about fourteen acres, for 13^-. a year, 
and this seems to correspond to the normal kind of 
holding, the house being thrown in, and less than a 
shilling an acre charged for the arable in the village 
fields. There was a John Shakespeare who held a 
cottage and a quarter of land, of about nine acres, who 
paid six and eightpence per annum. 

^ See the long note in Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., ii. 253-7. 



LOCAL CUSTOMS 131 

The list of the local customs is full of curious details. 
We learn that the words " to him and his " gave a full 
and formal inheritance ; that a widow retained her 
husband's estate for her life on paying a penny for 
admission ; that the rule of primogeniture prevailed 
among females as well as males ; that the tenants 
might lop and shred the trees "for tinsel and fire- 
making"; and that the custody of all idiots was left to 
the discretion of the steward. There is a note in the 
earlier document that one John Rogers, an idiot, had 
been committed to a Mr. Blount by Queen Elizabeth's 
own letters-patent; "but that Clement Griswold then 
governed him by virtue of a grant from the High 
Steward of Rowington." There is an allusion to these 
beggings for idiots in the clown's part in Love's Labour's 
Lost. Costard is laughing at the notion that three 
threes make nine, which he vows that only an idiot 
would believe : 

" Not so, sir ; under correction, sir ; I hope it is not so. 
You cannot beg us, sir, I can assure you, sir ; we know 
what we know."^ 

Something has been said as to Shakespeare's ignor- 
ance of the Rowington customs as shown by the 
provisions of his will. There seems, however, to have 
been a very good reason for what he did. In dealing 
with his copyhold cottage and garden near New Place, 
he gave his daughter Judith an additional legacy of 
;^5o on condition that she should give up all her estate 
and interest therein to her elder sister Susanna. But, 
by the Rowington custom, the eldest daughter was the 
heir, in case there were no male issue ; so that the 
condition, it is said, was evidently not required ; and 
it is stated that, as a matter of fact, the eldest daughter 
was accepted and admitted as heiress. But, from what 
has been said about the early history of the manor, it 

^ Loves Labour s Lost, v. 2, 489-90, 



132 MANOR OF ROWINGTON 

is obvious that there might well be doubts whether the 
custom would apply to the outlying portions, dragged 
into the manor for the convenience of the abbots. 

Tiddington Farm^ was originally part of the Alveston 
estate belonging to the Bishopric of Worcester before 
the Conquest. In course of time it was acquired by 
the Abbots of Reading, and was annexed to Rowington 
in some informal way ; and in the surveys now before 
us it is treated as having been a portion of their de- 
mesne. We shall take the description of the farm 
from the Parliamentary Survey of 1649. The farm is 
stated to be situate in the parish of Aston Cantlow.^ 
The farmhouse contained six rooms below and five 
above stairs ; it stood with its outbuildings in about 
an acre of ground, bounded on one side by the common 
field and on another by the Lucys' estate. We shall 
only mention those pieces of land belonging to the 
farm which are specially connected with our subject. 
The form of the entries will show both the situation of 
the lands and the methods of agriculture which then 
prevailed. There was a little pasture-field called Avon 
Close, between Mr. Challoner's lands on the south and 
the river of Avon on the north, a Home Close abutting 
on the open field, and another known as the Crofts 
fronting the highway leading to Banbury ; we find a 
meadow called the Lots, which we suppose to have 
been originally a lot-meadow divided among the 
tenants, and " a parcel of meadow-ground lying in the 
common mead called Tiddington Meadow," with 
various other entries of the same kind. The next 
series of descriptions related to pastures in the unin- 
closed fields : ''All those several pastures or leys lying 
in the common fields called the Cow-pastures, con- 
taining 84 leys lying intermixed with the lands of 

^ Dugdale, n.s., ii. 676-7. 

" It is now in Alveston parish, where it is locally situated. Aston 
Cantlow is six or seven miles away by the nearest road. 



FARM OF TIDDINGTON 133 

the rest of the inhabitants, viz. four leys, Thomas 
Higgens, lying on the north, and the lands of William 
Challoner in the south . . . one ley, William Alcock's, 
lying on the west and Ridges Furlong on the east. . . one 
ley, Mr, Lucey, lying on the west, and John Edwards 
on the east," and so forth, the whole of the eighty-four 
leys containing about twenty-eight acres. The next part 
of the survey relates to the land kept for wheat, barley, 
oats, and peas: "All those several parcels of arable 
land lying in a common field called the West Field, 
containing 120 lands lying intermixed with the lands 
of the rest of the inhabitants, viz. seven lands, lying 
between those of William Challoner on the east and of 
William Alcock on the west . . . three ridges, W. 
Challoner, lying on the north and the headland on the 
south . . . six lands, a furlong lying on the west and 
the lands of Thomas Townsend on the east . . . one 
headland abutting upon the lands of John Edwards on 
the south and the furlong on the north . . . one butt, 
John Duley, lying on the east and Thomas Lovel on 
the west," etc. Next follows a similar account of 135 
lands in the ley-field, lying intermixed as in the former 
case, including "One half-land, William Challoner, 
lying on the east and Thomas Lords on the west . . . 
half a land, William Hine, lying on the north and 
John Edwards on the south . . . three half-lands, 
William Challoner, on the south and William Alcock 
on the north . . . nine small lands abutting on the 
way leading to Wilborne^ on the north and a furlong 
called Hanging Furlong on the south, fifteen lands 
called Connegrey's Piece, Mr. Lucy, lying on the east 
and the Heathway on the west," etc., the whole 135 
lands making up about thirty-five acres. The next entry 
refers to nine lands in Rowley Piece, and the next to 
1 1 1 lands in the Heath-field, mostly lying near the 
Heathway Furlong and the Connegrey Furlong, where 

^ i.e. Wellesbourne Mountford. 



134 MANOR OF ROWINGTON 

the lord's " coney-gree," or rabbit-warren, must have 
been a dangerous neighbour to the corn.^ In New- 
bridge Field there were twenty-one and a half lands, 
each strip, as in the other cases, being about the third 
part of an acre in size ; in Crabtree Field were twenty- 
nine more strips, lying intermixed like the rest ; in 
the Craston Hades Field, nineteen lands ; and in the 
common field, called Hinde Ridge, twenty-eight lands, 
intermixed as before. 

These surveys help us to realise the condition of the 
country under the open-field system, when a whole 
parish was often laid out like a single farm. The yard- 
lands consisted mainly of a number of little strips set in 
some customary order about the uninclosed field, so 
that each owner might be supposed to have the benefit 
of different qualities in the soil.^ The system was 
absurd from an agricultural point of view ; and it has 
been stated by competent observers that the land in 
many places was better cultivated under Edward the 
Confessor than in the reign of George III. The 
accuracy of this opinion is confirmed by what we know 
of some of the fields which became well known in con- 
nection with battles in the Civil wars. We hear, for 
instance, of the "sad roads and bad husbandry" in 
Chalgrove field ; as to Naseby field, we are told that, 
even in this century, it was in much the same state as 
on the day of the battle. The lower parts were covered 
with furze, rushes, and fern ; the field, in fact, was 
almost in a state of nature, the avenues zigzagging as 
chance directed, and the hollows being unfilled, except 
with mire. The Stratford fields extended for miles in 

^ The word is met with in various forms ; e.g. Conyg-ar Hill in Somer- 
set, between Dunster and Minehead. The derivation is Coney-Garth. 
" In Wiltshire, Somersetshire, and other counties in the West of England, 
this word, variously spelt ... is often met with as the name of a field, 
and sometimes of a street, as in the town of Trowbridge" (Wright, 
Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English, i. 336). 

'^ See the drawing in Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., i. 245. 



SHOTTERY 135 

one open tract through Old Stratford, Bishopton, and 
Welcombe. In the same neighbourhood was Shottery 
field, occupied almost entirely by the several families 
of Hathaway. It will be remembered that when Mr. 
Abraham Sturley of Stratford wrote to Richard Quiney 
in London, on January 24th, 1597-8, on the subject of 
the Stratford tithes, he mentioned a report that Shake- 
speare intended to buy land at Shottery : ** This is one 
special remembrance from your father's motion. It 
seemeth by him that our countryman, Mr. Shakespeare, 
is willing to disburse some money upon some odd yard 
land or other at Shottery or near about us ; he thinketh 
it a very fit pattern to move him to deal in the matter 
of our tithes." ^ 

The first notices of Shottery appear in the records 
of the see of Worcester.^ Between the years 704 and 
709, Offa, King of Mercia, appears to have granted to 
the Bishop thirty-three "cassates," or homesteads, in 
''Scottarit," the estate being described as bounded by 
the stream of the Avon. When Domesday Book was 
compiled, Shottery seems to have been included in the 
general description of Stratford ; but it was not long 
before it appeared again as a separate estate. In the 
reign of Edward III. it belonged to the energetic 
Robert de Stratford, who did so much in the way of 
paving and improving the town where he was incum- 
bent, and by him it was entailed on Sir John Streeche 
and Isabel his wife, whose son, Sir John Streeche, sold 
the manor to the Dean and Canons of St. Martin-le- 
Grand. Dugdale tells a curious story about the owner- 
ship of the property in the next reign. Shottery at that 
time belonged to one Thomas Newnham, a priest in 
the King's service. This man was by birth a bondman 
belonging to the monastery of Evesham, and every- 
thing that he had could therefore have been taken by 

^ See copy in Halliwell-Phillipps, ti,s., ii. 57. 
^ Dugdale, it.s., ii. 702-3. 



136 



MANOR OF ROWINGTON 



his masters, if it were not for his employment under 
the Crown. In 1394 the monks seized the estate, with- 
out getting a royal licence ; the property was therefore 
forfeited to the Crown, and was granted by the King 
to Sir William Arundel ''to hold so long as it con- 
tinued in the Crown for the reason aforesaid." No 
regard, it appears, was paid to the equitable claims of 
the unfortunate bondman. The state of Shottery in 
Shakespeare's time may be conjectured from the later 
description in the private Act for its inclosure in 1786. 
That Act recites that in Shottery were certain common 
fields, meadows, and pastures, called Shottery field, 
containing about 1,600 acres; this tract was divided 
among thirty-nine and three-quarter yard-lands, with a 
few strips or "odd lands" over. All these lands, the 
Act proceeds, ''lie intermixed and dispersed in small 
parcels, subject to frequent trespass and much incon- 
venience, and in their present state are incapable of 
any considerable improvement," and it was pointed 
out how much benefit would result from dividing them 
into separate portions. 




MIDLAND AGRICULTURE AND 

NATURAL HISTORY 

IN SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS 



MIDLAND AGRICULTURE AND 

NATURAL HISTORY 

IN SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS 



I 

EARLY in 1602, Shakespeare was negotiating with 
William and John Combe for a farm scattered in 
the Stratford common fields, with a view of improving 
his position in the parish and making it easier to pur- 
chase the tithes. Something occurred which postponed 
the sale, though the conveyance was ready for execu- 
tion. The document was printed by Mr. R. B. Wheler 
in 1806, with the following heading: ''Copies of 
several documents relating to Shakspeare, and his 
family, never before printed; which, with the Probate 
of Lady Barnard's Will, are now in my possession. 
The first (unfortunately not executed, though a seal 
is appended to it) I have thought proper, it being an 
authentic deed of the time, to preserve ; as with the 
subsequent ones it shews the extent and value of some 
parts of Shakspeare's property."^ Mr. Halliwell- 
Phillipps printed the " original conveyance " of the 107 
acres, ^ with the signatures and seals of William and 
John Combe, and a note of delivery of the deed to 

^ V^\i€i&v, History and Antiquities of Stratford 1 1806^ p. 139. 
2 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 17-19. 

139 



I40 MIDLAND AGRICULTURE 

Gilbert Shakespeare on behalf of William Shake- 
speare ; but these may be later additions, made when 
Shakespeare was able to pay the price, amounting to 
;^320 for about 321 strips of arable, with rights of 
common. We know from another document printed 
in the Outlines'^ that in 1610 Shakespeare had pur- 
chased this property, with an additional twenty acres 
of meadow, and that he had paid the Combes an 
additional ;^ioo for confirming the conveyance. In 
Lady Barnard's will this meadow was described as 
" half a yard-land," ^ as if it had been originally under 
tillage. It appears that meadows were often formed 
by developing fallow-lands into permanent pasture ; 
but it was found convenient to retain the old descrip- 
tions, to show what property was comprised in the 
title. 

The Stratford Common Fields were good examples of 
the Midland husbandry. The Stratford Inclosure Act, 
1774, shows that they consisted of three arable fields, 
with pastures adjoining, known as Stratford field, 
Bishopton field, and Welcombe field, in the hamlets 
of Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe, contain- 
ing altogether about 1,600 acres. It appears from 
prior inclosure proceedings that Welcombe field con- 
tained about 400 acres. Shakespeare's 127 acres are 
shown by a conveyance to have been in Stratford field, 
partly in the hamlet, and partly in the borough. ^ 

The whole extent of the three fields was estimated 
at "fifty yard-lands with some odd lands," Shakespeare's 
part being taken at " four yard-lands and a half." Each 
yard-land, on the average, contained ninety "lands," 
each ridge, or "land," containing about one-third of an 
acre. There were also "small lands," and " half- 
lands," and "head-lands." It should be remembered 

1 Ibid., 25. 2 iii^_^ 62. 

^ Ibid., 17: "Scytuate, lyinge and being-e within the parrishe, feildes 
or towne of Old Stretford aforesaid." 



COMMON FIELDS 141 

that a "yard-land" was a small holding measured out 
by the yard or rod, and distributed in little strips 
about the fields, so that each farmer might have his 
shares of good and bad soil. 

The field, taken as the unit, apart from the customs 
about yard-lands, was laid out in oblong blocks known 
as ''furlongs"; these were divided by long '^ balks," 
or grassy spaces, used as lanes. The word balk was 
applied to the main tracks leading across the field, and 
in some cases to the little oblong ridges, or seed-beds, 
themselves. Minsheu gives "to Balke, or make a 
balke in earing of land " ; ^ and this may be illustrated 
out of Shakespeare's dedication of his Ve^ius and 
Adonis. "But if the first heir of my invention prove 
deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a god-father, 
and never after ear so barren a land^ for fear it yield 
me still so bad a harvest." 

The tillage-lands and cow-pastures were protected by 
banks and fences called meers ; and the name in time 
came to mean a "marking-off" for any special purpose. 
Enobarbus applied it to Antony in describing the sea- 
fight :— 

"When half to half the world opposed, he being 
The meered question." ^ 

At Stratford there was another kind of boundary 
called "free-boards," as mentioned in the Stratford 
Inclosure Act, 1774. The "free-board" is more 
usually found as the ancient boundary of a forest. 
"Frith" meant a tract of common, ^ and the "free- 
board " was a band of grass-land marking its extent. 
The "free-board" of Stratford field is shown in 

^ Minsheu, Ductor in Linguas, 1617, p. 27. 

^ Antony and Cleopatra, iii. 13, 9-10. 

^ "Frith" meant orig-inally a wood or coppice (Wright, Dictionary, 
ti.s., 483), and so came to be applied to any tract covered with under- 
growth. English Dialect Dictionary, ii. 501, quotes the Cumberland and 
Lancashire use of the word in the sense of "unused pasture-land," 



142 MIDLAND AGRICULTURE 

Winter's plan of Stratford, 1768, behind the Henley- 
Street houses.^ It was traversed by the Guildpits 
Road, leading to the place where the Bishops held a 
petty manorial court within their Liberty of Path- 
low. The larger court-leet was held twice a year at 
the barrow called Pathlow or '^Pate's grave." 

When the arable lay in fallow it was used as a 
common pasture, except in certain places where a 
separate right had been acquiesced. In the Rowing- 
ton Survey we read of eighty-four leys intermixed, and 
of a ley-field of 135 "lands," lately restored to tillage ; 
and we find another illustration in Timon's speech to 
Mother Earth: "Dry up thy marrows, vines, and 
plough-torn leas."^ 

The rights incidental to Shakespeare's "yard-lands" 
comprised privileges on other persons' fallows, called 
"hades, leys, and tyings."^ Little is known as to the 
meaning of "hades," except they must have been 
rights on very small pieces of land, relating probably 
to turning the plough on the neighbour's " head-land." 
Cowell's Interpreter quotes a document from Orleton 
in Herefordshire, where a tenant surrendered two 
acres, containing ten ridges, or seed-beds, and two 
hades.^ The Rowington Survey, as we noticed in the 
preceding essay, describes a small common-field by 
the name of Craston Hades. The head-lands were 
pieces at each end of a furrow, where the plough 

^ Reproduced in Halliwell-Phillipps, ii.s., i. 202. 

- Timo?t of Athens, iv. 3, 193, 

^ In conveyance of May, 1602, ti.s.i "And also all hades, leys, tying-es, 
proffittes, advantages and commodities whatsoever." Cf. Fitzherbert, 
Book of Husbandry, ed. Skeat, 1882, §6, p. 15: "The horses may be 
tethered or tied upon leys, balks, or hades, where as oxen may notbe 
kept." 

* Cowell, A Law Dictionary , etc., 1627, s.v., Hades of lattd. New Eng. 
Diet., vol. v., p. 13, gives "Hade. ... A strip of land left unploughed 
. . . between two ploughed portions of a field." The sense connecting- 
it with the head-lands of the field is "perhaps a mistake arising from 
the identification of hade with head." 



CULTIVATION OF YARD-LANDS 143 

turned ; they were sometimes mere cart-ways, but by 
management they might be cropped ; as in the second 
part of Henry IV. the servant asks Shallow, "Again, 
sir, shall we sow the head-land with wheat? Shal. With 
red wheat, Davy."i Shakespeare also mentions the 
early "white wheat," mildewed by the foul fiend, 
Flibbertigibbet.2 It was often mixed with rye in a 
"blend"; and this was said to be "the surest corn 
for growing." But very little rye was ever sown near 
Stratford, the soil being heavy and more adapted to 
wheat and beans. "Some ground," says Fitzherbert, 
"is good for wheat, some for rye, and some is good 
for both." The song of the two pages in As You 
Like It^ may be a true sketch of one side of the "green 
corn-field," laid out in the "acres of the rye." The 
lover and his lass are in one of the grassy balks be- 
tween the "lands," chattering about the furrow-weeds, 
and the corn-cockles, and wild-mustard, and pink 
cuckoo-flowers : — 

"This carol they began that hour, 
With a hey and a ho., and a hey 7ionino, 
How that a life was but a flower, 
In the Spring-time. . . 
Sweet lovers love the Spring." 

The "rank fumitory"** was the worst enemy of the 
rye. It appeared in June or at the end of spring in 
a very wet season. "It groweth like vetches," says 
the Book of Husbandry , " but it is much smaller, and it 
will grow as high as the corn, and with the weight 
thereof it pulleth the corn flat to the earth, and fretteth 
the ears away."° 

Shakespeare refers in The Tempest to the long blocks, 

1 2 Henry IV., \. r, 15-17. ^ King Lear, iii, 4, 123. 

^ As You Like It, v. 3, 17-34. 

* Henry V., v. 2, 45. Also see King Lear, iv. 4, 3. 
^ Fitzherbert, u.s., §20, p, 30. He calls it "terre," i.e. tares. His 
form of "vetches" is "fytches." 



144 MIDLAND AGRICULTURE 

called "furlongs," in the common fields. Gonzal© 
makes a whimsical comparison between the vast tracts 
of foam and a little waste corner in the village field. 
"Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an 
acre of barren ground, long heath, brown furze, any- 
thing. The wills above be done ! but I would fain die 
a dry death." ^ We may suppose also that Hermione 
referred to the arable furlongs in the Winter's Tale : 

'* You may ride's 
With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs ere 
With spur we heat an acre."^ 

The word "tyings" meant the right of tethering a 
horse, hobbled with a "tye" or chain, so as to graze 
on the neighbour's herbage. A good illustration occurs 
in Fitzherbert's treatise on Husbandry, in a discussion 
on the saying, "Eat within your tether." "Take thy 
horse, and go tether him upon thine own leys, flit him 
as oft as thou wilt, no man will say ' wrong thou dost ' ; 
but make thy horse too long a tether . . . so . . . that 
it reacheth to the midst of another man's leys or corn : 
now hast thou given him too much liberty." ^ 

The farmers as a rule enjoyed rights of pastures on 
the corn-lands in fallow, the weeds providing an abund- 
ance of coarse food for the town-herd or common-flock. 
But in some districts portions of the fallow were ex- 

1 Tempest, i. i, 67-70. Cf. Two Gentlemen of Verona, i. i, 158, where 
the messenger is safe from wreck, "being destined to a drier death on 
shore." It is interesting to refer to Rabelais, Pantagruel, iv. 18: "O 
que troys et quatre foys heureux sont ceulx qui plantent choulx ! O 
Faroes, que ne me fillastes vous pour planteur de choulx ! O que 
petit est le nombre de ceulx a qui lupiter ha telle faueur ported qu'il- les 
ha destinez a planter choulx ! Car ilz ont tousiours en terre ung pied, 
I'aultre n'en est pas loing." And ibid., 20, where Panurge continues his 
seasick lamentations : ' ' Pleust la digne vertus de Dieu qua heure presente 
ie feusse dedans le clous de Sevilli^, ou chez Innocent le pastissier, deuant 
la caue paincte a Chinon . . . Ie vous donne tout Salmiguondinoys et ma 
grande cacquerolliere, si par vostre Industrie ie trouue une foys terre 
ferme " (ed. Bibliophile Jacob, pp. 368, 372). 

2 Winter's Tale, i. 2, 94-6. ^ Fitzherbert, u,s., §148, p. 100. 



RIGHTS OF PASTURE 145 

empted from the general right, and were kept as 
"severals," or " sunder-lands," for the owner's pri- 
vate use. Shakespeare refers to this practice in Love's 
Lahotir's Lost, where Boyet offers Maria a kiss. "Not 
so, gentle beast," she cries ; '* My lips are no common, 
though several they be." "Belonging to whom?" 
" To my fortunes and me."^ 

The Masque in The Tempest contains several allu- 
sions to the ancient methods of husbandry. It opens 
with a picture of a lovely island, the treasure-house of 
the Goddess of Plenty.^ Ceres herself guards the 
rampart of cliffs that shut in her vines in cluster on 
their poles, her plough-torn leas, and the grassy banks 
that "catch flower" in the spring. The sketch of the 
vines in their ranks seems to be meant as a sign of 
antiquity, indicating that the scene was laid as far back 
as the Roman times. It was almost a commonplace in 
Shakespeare's time that there had been a store of vines 
in this country, since their cultivation had been allowed 
by the Emperor Probus.^ There can hardly be a doubt, 
when the various phrases of the Masque are examined 
in this light, that its island of Ceres was " Britannia." 
The landscape shows the girls picking flowers for their 
garlands, from banks and pastures, 

" When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim 
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing, 
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him."^ 

The ploughing of a hillside drew the soil down, till 
it was checked by terraces, or natural platforms, which 
soon became covered with coppices and underwood. 
This explains the word of Ceres as to her "bosky 
acres," below the " unshrubb'd down," and the laugh- 

^ Love s Labour's Lost, ii. i, 222-4. '^ Tempest, iv. i, 60-117. 

^ See Camden, Britannia, tr. Holland, p. 269 D. E. , of the Vine, Lord 
Sands' house at Basing : " The vines , . . which wee have had in Britaine, 
since Probus the Emperours time, rather for shade than fruit," etc. 

* Sonnet xcviii. 2-4. 
L 



146 MIDLAND AGRICULTURE 

ing talk of Iris about lass-lorn bachelors in the shade 
of the broom. The Yorkshire broom-groves are often 
twelve feet high, and a "grove" is presumed to con- 
sist of underwood ; this was laid down in the case of 
Robert Barret against his mother.^ We owe the 
sketch of *'the banks with pioned . . . brims" to a 
kindly reminiscence of Spenser's ''painefull pyon- 
ings " in the second book of The Faerie Queene ;^ and 
the lass-lorn love may be recognised in his Shepheards 
Calender for January : — 

" I love thilke lasse (alas ! why doe I love ?) 
And am forlorne (alas ! why am I lorne ? ) " ^ 

And in the April eclogue, good Hobbinol is asked : 

"Or is thy Bagpype broke, that soundes so sweete? , 
Or art thou of thy loved lasse forlorne ? " * 

The brims of the banks were "pioned," or raised by 
the spade, like mounds in war cast up by the labouring 
"pioners."^ The banks were also said to be "twilled," 
a term which has caused a great discussion. It seems 
to be an allusion to the diagonal pattern on "twilled 
cloth," the bank being marked with parallel lines of 
"binders," pegged down when the hedges were 
plashed, to protect quick-sets, or boughs split and 
"laid down," against the bite of cattle. We find an 
illustrative passage in Covel's Diary for October, 1675. 
At Malaga, said Dr. Covel, some spread their twills 
on the bedsteads, "but I, with one or two more, 
had the fortune to put our twills for coolness into the 
middle of the floor." ^ Theobald's suggestion, that the 

^ Sir Thos. Hetley, Reports and Cases, 1657, p. 35: "A Grove 
ordinarily is Under-wood." ^ Faerie Queejie, ii. 10, stanza 63. 

® Shepheards Caleyider, Januarie, stanza 11. 

* Id., April, stanza i. ^ Hamlet, i. 5, 163 ; Henry V., iii. 2, 92. 

^ Extracts from the Diaries of Dr. John Covel, 1670-9, ed. J. T. 
Bent for Hakluyt Society, 1893, p. 115. "Twilled," in the disputed 
passage, has been interpreted without alteration as "covered with 
sedge." This view takes "twill" as another form of "quill," through 
the French equivalent ttiyau. See Appendix iii. (pp. 180-2) to Mr. Morton 
Luce's edition of The Te77ipest (Methuen, 1902). 



MASQUE IN THE TEMPEST 147 

passage referred to the banks of a stream, " pseonied 
and lilied," brings Shakespeare's Masque down to 
the level of The Arraignment of Paris ; for in Peele's 
sketch of a brook, 

" The watery flowers and lilies on the banks, 
Like blazing- comets burg'eon all in ranks. "^ 

As for peonies, one should remember Gerard's saying, 
''that the male Peionie groweth wilde upon a conie 
berrie in Betsome;"-^ but his editor. Dr. T. Johnson, 
added a note in 1633: "I have been told that our 
Author himselfe planted that Peionie there, and after- 
wards seemed to finde it there by accident ; and I do 
beleeve it was so, because none before or since have 
ever seen or heard of it growing wild since in any part 
of this Kingdome." ^ In quoting the speech of Iris, we 
may also note that stover is used for rough hay, kept 
to fodder the sheep in winter. The lines of herbage 
and frondage are compared by way of metaphor to the 
bays of a roof thatched with reeds or straw. " Reed " 
is now a name in the western counties for wheat-straw 
made ready for thatching ; but in former times the com- 
mon rushes and reeds were used for covering roofs, 
even in large towns. In 1619 the Privy Council ordered 
that the houses "thatched with reed and straw" at 
Cambridge, should for the future be slated or tiled ; 
and in the same year another order was made to the 
same effect about the thatched houses in Stratford, 
though one sturdy burgess seems to have refused to 
buy slates "to save his neighbour's apricot-tree." 
Shakespeare mentions the reed-thatching in describing 
the grief of Gonzalo : — 

** His tears run down his beard, like winter's drops 
From eaves of reeds. ""^ 

^ Peele, Arraigninent of Paris, i. 3. 
" Gerard, Herbal, 1597, lib, 2, c. 364, p. 831. 
^ Id., ed. T. Johnson, 1633, lib. 2, c. 380, p. 983. 
* Tempest, v. i, 16-17. 



148 MIDLAND AGRICULTURE 

In 1614, Mr. William Combe and his son John 
formed a project of inclosing Welcombe field, by 
agreement with the majority of the proprietors. They 
relied, no doubt, upon a sudden change of policy in the 
Court of Chancery, under Lord Ellesmere, who in that 
very year had decreed inclosures of wastes and com- 
monable lands as being for the public advantage. 
Various instances of this kind were collected by ''that 
famous lawyer, William Tothill," in his Transactions of 
the High Court of Chancery, 1649. "The Court," for 
instance, " compells certain men, that would not agree 
to Inclosures, to yeild unto the same, and binds a 
Colledge that would not consent."^ But after a few years 
there was another change, and inclosure was no longer 
compelled, but was regarded as contrary to the plain 
words of the Acts against the population and decay of 
tillage. Shakespeare's land was not in Welcombe field, 
but he would naturally object to anything that would 
injure his tithes, having special regard to the very 
high prices for corn in the neighbourhood of Stratford. 
Mr. Thomas Greene, Town Clerk of Stratford, made 
notes upon the proposed inclosure, which have now 
been separately published by Dr. Ingleby.^ The ex- 
tracts from these notes are given in modern spelling 
for the reader's convenience. 

"Jovis: 17 No: [vembris, 1614]. My cousin Shakespeare 
coming- yesterday to town {i.e. Stratford), I went to see him 
how he did. He told me that they assured him they meant 
to inclose no further than to Gospel Bush . . . and he and 
Mr. Hall say, they think there will be nothing done at all." 

The Town Council met on the 23rd of December : 

'* A Hall.^ Letters written, one to Mr. Malnwaring, 
another to Mr. Shakespeare, with almost all the company's 
hands to either. I also writ of myself to my cousin Shake- 

•^ Tothill, as in text, ed. 1671, p. 174. 

^ Birming-ham, 1885. ^ i.e. a council-meeting. 



INCLOSURE OF WELCOMBE FIELD 149 

speare the copies of all our oaths made,^ and then also a 
note of the inconveniences would grow by the inclosure." 

A few days afterwards there is a note of an agree- 
ment with Mr. Replingham, providing an indemnity 
for Shakespeare against loss on tithes, Mr. Greene 
being now added as a party : ''9 Jan^., 1614. Mr. Rep- 
lingham, 28 Ocf. , articled with Mr. Shakespeare, and 
then I was put in by T. Lucas." Greene evidently had 
acquired some interest in the tithes. The next entry 
runs as follows: "11 Jan^., 1614. Mr. Mainwaring 
and his agreement for me with my cousin Shake- 
speare." The final entry has been the subject of some 
discussion : ''Sept. Mr. Shakespeare telling J. Greene 
that I was not able to bear the inclosing of Welcombe." 
As Thomas Greene and Shakespeare were acting as 
partners, it does not much matter which of them made 
the objection. Some read the passage, however, as if 
/ were used for he or «, which in the local dialects 
were almost equivalent."^ 

Shortly before Shakespeare's death in 1616, the Cor- 
poration agreed to petition against the inclosure, as an 
injury to the Church, charities, and tithes ; and it was 
ordered during the Lent Assizes at Warwick that no 
inclosure to the decay of tillage should take place 
without leave of the justices in open Assizes ; and 
this order was confirmed on the same circuit two years 
afterwards. Mr. Combe proceeded in the teeth of 
these orders to throw down the banks, and to cut up 
the 400 acres of corn-land into pasture-fields. The Cor- 
poration appealing to the Privy Council, Sir Richard 
Verney and others were commissioned to view the 
place and report; and early in 1618 the cause was 

•^ The handwriting is difficult to read, and the phrase " oaths made " is 
Dr. Ingleby's conjecture. Others read simply "acts." 

2 S&& Henry V., ii. 3, 9: "'A made a finer end"; and id., iii. 2, 28: "Lest 
'a should be thought a coward. " The obvious explanation in this case is 
that Thomas Greene quoted Shakespeare's words in oratio recta. 



I50 NATURAL HISTORY 

sent for arbitration to Sir Julius C^sar, Master of the 
Rolls, and Sir Edward Coke, late Lord Chief Justice. 
On the 1 2th of March the Privy Council wrote to Mr. 
Combe about his disobedience, and ordered that his 
inclosures should be forthwith laid open, that the 
pasture should be turned back into arable, and the 
banks and meers restored, at his peril if he made any- 
further resistance. 

II 

There are allusions to the system of common-field 
husbandry, both in the plays and the sonnets, which 
indicate that Shakespeare had in his mind the un- 
drained corn-field and " water furlongs " extending by 
the stream of the Avon. The open fallows on which 
the sheep were turned appear, as we have noted, in the 
interchange of repartee between Boyet and Maria in 
Love's Labour's Lost; a common belongs to several, 
but all several things are not common.^ With this 
we may compare the lines in the 137th Sonnet: — 

" Why should my heart think that a several plot 
Which my heart knows the wide world's common place? "^ 

Another passage in the same play refers to the breed- 
ing of wild-fowl in the riverside fields. Longaville is 
rebuking Berowne for an illogical remark : *' He weeds 
the corn and still lets grow the weeding " ; and his 
friend retorts, with a reference to the marshy fields, 
''The Spring is near when green geese are a-breed- 
ing."^ Then in A Midsummer Night's Di'eam we 
have a picture of "wild geese that the creeping fowler 
eye " ; * and we find from early books on sporting that 
the gray-lags and barnacle geese used often to be seen 
feeding in the furlongs, and that the fowlers caught 

^ S^Lp., p. 145. 2 11. 9-10. 

^ Love's Labour s Lost, i, i , 96-7 . 

•* Midsummer Night's Dream, iii. 2, 20. 



WILD-FOWL 151 

them there with limed rods, or used the stalking-horse 
to get within shot. Instructions on these points will 
be found in The Experienc' d Fowler. " In Winter time 
when no Snow lies, the Wild-geese and Barnacles re- 
sort to the green Wheat to Grase, here you must 
prick down large Rods in the Furrows, as near the 
colour of the Earth as may be, and chuse those Furrows 
where there is Water. "^ For stalking the sportsman 
required a canvas screen, cut into the shape of a tree 
with twigs and branches, or a cow or stag, or any other 
large creature with which the wild-fowl were familiar ; 
but the best plan was to have "an old staid horse" 
that would not mind the firing ; "and you must guide 
him with nothing but a String of a Grass-colour, or 
in Snowy Weather white, about his nether Chap, about 
two or three Yards long : teach him to walk gently on 
the Banks of Brooks and Rivers, or in open Fields, in 
a grazing posture." The fowler needed a good fire- 
lock, about as large as a harquebuss ; "it is not so 
discernable to the Fowl as a Match-lock, neither so 
troublesome ; and then again in Rain, Snow, Fogs, 
or windy weather there is no fear of extinguishing, 
as a Match often is, when you are many Miles from a 
House, perhaps, and then if you have not a Tinder- 
box at hand, your Sport for a time is marred."^ 

We must not forget the " russet-pated chough" that 
swarmed in the open fields, " many in sort, rising and 
cawing at the gun's report."^ These generally have 
been taken for the Cornish choughs, the epithet 
"russet-pated" being supposed to refer to their red 
beaks and eyes; if "russet-patted" be taken as the 
true reading, according to Professor Newton's sugges- 
tion, the word would refer to their red legs and feet. 

^ The Experienc d Fowler: or, The Gentleman s Recreation, etc., 
printed for G. Conyers at the Golden Ring, and J. Sprint at the Bell in 
Little Britain, p, 66. 

'^ Id., pp. 49, 41. -^ Midsummer Night^s Dj'cam, iii. 2, 21-2. 



152 NATURAL HISTORY 

For an accurate description of the bird we may refer to 
Mr. Cecil Smith's Birds of Somersetshire. The beak, 
legs, and toes, he says, are all of a sealing-wax red ; the 
claws are black; "the irides are of two colours, the 
inner ring being red and the outer blue ; the eyelids 
are red ; the whole of the plumage is of a beautiful 
black shot with purple."^ The Cornish chough is a 
frequenter of sea-cliffs, and always has been kept from 
occupying the inland parts by "his enemy, the jack- 
daw." The acts for the destruction of crows and 
choughs, passed by Henry VIII. and renewed by 
Elizabeth, appear to relate to jackdaws, as distin- 
guished from Cornish choughs. Parliament declared 
that "an innumerable number of rooks, crows, and 
choughs, do daily breed and increase throughout this 
realm, which yearly do destroy and consume a wonder- 
ful and marvellous great quantity of corn and grain " ; 
and it was enacted that the noxious fowl should be 
destroyed by means of birds-nesting, and by crow-nets 
to be kept in every parish and to be used with a bait 
described as "a sharp made of chaff." The word 
" russet-pated " seems to refer to the mingled black 
and ash-coloured plumage of the jackdaw's neck. We 
hear in one of Captain Marryat's novels of " a dandy 
gray-russet cap " ; and it is well known that russet was 
used not long ago as being the name of a grey 
material. We cannot be quite sure, of course, what 
the drapers may have meant by the word in Shake- 
speare's day ; but there is a passage in Stow's Survey 
which seems to show that it implied a mixture of 
colours. Stow quoted the household accounts of 
Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, for the seventh year of 
Edward II., and noticed that among the liveries pro- 
vided for Christmas was a cloth of russet for the 
Bishop of Anjou, and stuff of the same colour for 
certain poor men ; on which he adds the note : 

^ C. Smith, The Birds of Somersetshire, 1869, p. 221. 



''RUSSET-PATED" CHOUGHS 153 

'•'■ Northern russet ... I have seen sold for Four Pence 
the Yard, and was good Cloth of a mingled Colour."^ 
The description of the Shepherd in Greene's Menaphon 
shows, at any rate, that it was not an ordinary red. 
Menaphon, we are told, was attired in a " russet jacket, 
red sleeves of camlet, a blue bonnet and round slop of 
country cloth." ^ There are passages in Shakespeare's 
plays showing that the word was used as relating 
rather to the quality of a stuff than to any colour with 
which it might have been dyed ; as, for example, when 
Biron talks of taffeta phrases in contrast with ''russet 
Yeas and honest kersey Noes,"^ or when Hamlet's 
friend points to the breaking of the dawn : — 

** But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad 
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill."* 

Let us now examine a few of the passages in which 
Shakespeare seems to be distinctly referring to the 
scenery and natural products of the corn-fields and 
meadows near the Avon. We might include the river 
itself and the willows reflected in its "glassy stream," ^ 
remembering the poet's way of describing the flight 
of the wild geese,^ or the "doting mallard,"" the 
wounded duck in the sedge, ^ and the little grebe, or 
dive-dapper, "peering through a wave."'' He re- 
membered how the larks were caught in the great 
stubbles about harvest -time, just before the wild 
hobbies, or lark-hawks, began migrating. Some much 
delight, said Robert Burton, to take larks with day- 
nets and other small birds with chaff-nets ;^*' decoy birds 

^ Stow, Survey, ed. Strype, 1720, bk. i. pp. 243-4. "Anjou" is used 
here, as in many other instances, as equivalent to Angers. 
^ Greene, Menaphon, ed. Arber, p. 35. 

^ Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2, 406,412-3. ^ Hamlet, i. i, 166-7. 

5 Hamlet, iv. 7, 167-8. ^ Midsummer Night's Dream, u.s. 

'' Antony and Cleopatra, iii. 10, 20. 

8 Miich Ado about Nothing, ii. i, 209-10. " Venus and Adonis, 86. 

^° Atiat. 0/ Mel., ii. §2, mem. 4 (ed. Shilleto, ii. 84). 



154 NATURAL HISTORY 

being set, as Ariel baited his trap with frippery, for 
a ''stale" to catch these thieves.^ As to the larks, we 
have the railing attack upon Wolsey : — 

"If we live thus tamely, 
To be thus jaded by a piece of scarlet, 
Farewell nobility ; let his grace go forv/ard, 
And dare us with his cap like larks." ^ 

The fowler took a little trammel of green thread, like 
a landing-net, and a hobby on a long pole ; and creep- 
ing up to the place where the flock alighted, he 
suddenly held up the hawk, which cowed the birds 
so that they could be netted or taken by hand, "they 
are so fearful of the Hobby, which preys on them 
about this Season."^ We should remember also the 
fluttering of the young Adonis, ''Look how a bird 
lies tangled in a net";^ and the jest about "bat- 
fowling " in The Tempest.^ As to the latter sport, 
"Have a Wicker," says the Experienced Fowler, "with 
a handle to hold on high, in which you can place three 
or four Links." *^ We hear of superstitious fancies about 
the birds of night, and not merely as to hooting and 
screeching owls, but of dismal night-ravens and night- 
crows that throttle out a kind of croaking voice like one 
that is strangled. When the wicked King Richard was 
born, the "night-crow cried, aboding luckless time."'' 
When the singer in Much Ado about Nothing sings, 
"Sigh no more," and "Sing no more ditties, sing no 
mo," what says the mocking Benedick? "An ill 
singer, my lord," — in itself a bold jest against the 
sweet musician. Jack Wilson, who took the part of 

^ Tempest, iv. i, 187. '^ Henry VII/., iii. 2, 279-82. 

^ Experienc'd Foivler, u. s. , p. 55. 

* Venus and Adonis, 67. ^ Tempest, ii. i, 185. 

^ Experienc'd Fowler, zi.s., p. 89. One man beats the hedge with a 
pole, and one or two more carry long- bushes, walking near the light : 
when the birds are "unroosted," they flutter about the links, so that the 
men with the bushes easily beat them down. 

^ 3 He7iry VI., v. 6, 45. 



RAVENS AND CROWS 155 

Baltasar — ''and I pray God his bad voice bode no 
mischief; I had as lief have heard the night-raven, 
come what plague could have come after it."^ The 
myths about this grim raven come down from the 
remotest antiquity ; they appear in the Greek romances 
about Alexander ; they reappeared in our time in 
Edgar Poe's vision of the ominous bird of yore. 
"Tell me, tell me I implore," sighs the haunted 
wretch, "tell me what thy lordly name is on the 
night's Plutonian shore." John Ray, the great 
botanist, is one of the best witnesses in any question 
about Shakespeare's country. He paid special atten- 
tion to the natural history of the Midlands during his 
visits to Mr. Willughby at Sutton Coldfield ; and a 
passage in his travels shows that the night-raven of 
Shakespeare's time was the squacco heron, which 
roosts by streams and makes a groaning or gobbling 
in the dark. He made a bye-journey from Leyden to 
Sevenhuys to see "a remarkable grove where, in time 
of year, several sorts of wildfowl build and breed." He 
observed there, in great numbers, shags and spoon- 
bills, and the Quack or lesser heron, and "the Germans 
call this bird the Night-raven, because it makes a noise 
in the night. "^ The same writer's list of northern 
words explains another allusion to " Night's black 
agents," as they appeared in the fevered imagination 
of Macbeth :— 

*' Light thickens, and the crow 
Makes wing to the rooky wood."^ 

This has nothing to do with Tennyson's "black re- 
public" on the elms,* or the crow "that leads the 
clanging rookery home."^ It is rather the night-crow 
preparing for deeds of rapine in the misty woods, 

1 Much Ado about Nothing, ii. 3, 83-5. 

^ J. Ray, Travels through the Loiii-Countries , etc., 2nd ed., 1738, i. 2Z' 

^ Macbeth, Hi. 2, 50-1. '^ Ayhners Field, 529. 

■^ Locksley Hall, stanza 34. 



156 NATURAL HISTORY 

since '' rooky" in Shakespeare's home meant vaporous, 
or reeking, and the epithet implies no more than such 
phrases as the reek of sighs, or a lover's breath, the 
smoke of the lime-kiln,^ or "reek o' the rotten fens."^ 
Ray also explained another difficult phrase, which 
Shakespeare transferred from the milking-shed into 
the domain of magic and witchcraft. The Stratford 
Records show that there was once an altercation be- 
tween two old women, in which Goody Bromlie crushed 
Goody Holder ''with the execration, Arent the, wich ! " 
Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps^ remarks that the phrase is 
shown by this entry to have been commonly used by 
the lower classes in Stratford. The words assume a 
mystical form as they appear in Macbeth and King 
Lear: "Aroint thee, witch! the rump-fed ronyon 
cries." '^ We observe how the snarling note comes in, 
and we are reminded of Romeo and the Nurse. 

" Doth not rosemary and Romeo begin both with a letter? 
Ay, nurse, what of that ? both with an R. 
Ah, mocker ! that's the dog's name ! "^ 

In the fish-fag quarrel the sting lay in the epithet 
"Witch." Aroint thee, or " rynt thee," was a milk- 
maid's word, telling her cow to stand away from the 
pail. *■*■ Rynt ye," said Ray, is " By your leave, stand 
handsomely." There was also a proverb about an 
impudent maid who had treated her mother like one of 
the cows. " Rynt you Witch, quoth Besse Locket to 
her Mother." The jest had become a proverb in 
Cheshire and the neighbouring districts. *^ 

1 Merry Wives of Windsor, iii. 3, 86. 

^ Coriolanus, iii. 12, 13. ^ op. «'/. , i. 142. 

^ Macheth, i. i, 6. See also King Lear, iii. 4, 129. 

^ Romeo and Juliet, ii. 4, 219-23. 

'° Ray, Collection of English Words, 3rd ed. , 1737, p. 52. 



MEADOW-FLOWERS 157 



III 



The country round Stratford appears as we read the 
Masque in The Tempests The vineyards, indeed, and 
the tall broom-groves have a foreign appearance ; 
but we are at home in the ''rich leas" of corn, the 
sheep downs, and flat meads thatched with stover for 
winter-keep. It should be noticed that "leas" are 
meant for lands in tillage, as in the Ley-field at Row- 
ington, and not for fallows, which the word would 
technically denote.^ This appears by Fitzherbert's 
instructions how to amend lea-ground "the whiche 
hath ben errable lande of late": "Ye must take hede 
howe the leyse lye, and specially that they lye nat to 
hyghe, for an they do, it is more profit to the husbande 
to caste it downe agayne, and sowe it with otes."^ 

There is sometimes a difficulty in understanding the 
references to meadow-flowers, owing chiefly to the fact 
that the same name is used for different plants, accord- 
ing to the fancy of the nurses and children in various 
districts ; the names themselves, it may be added, 
being so vague that there is no reason why they should 
not be used for plants that are totally unlike in appear- 
ance. Ophelia's crow-flowers, '^ for instance, may be 
buttercups, or bluebells, or any other flower that blows 
when the rooks are nesting. Her "long-purples" are 
the orchids called "dead man's thumbs"; but Tennyson 
was thinking of the great willowy loose-strife, when he 
described the "long purples" creeping towards the 
bramble-roses in a country churchyard.^ Shakespeare's 
crow-flower was the ragged robin, or meadow-pink, 

^ Tempest, iv. i, 60-75. 

^ As in Henry V., v. 2, 44, "her fallow leas." In Ttmon of Athens, 
iv. 3, 192, on the other hand, we have "plough-torn leas," u.s., p. 142. 

^ Fitzherbert, Book of Surveying, 1523, cap. xxvii., fol. 44, back. 

* Hajyilet, iv. 7, 170. Glossary to "Globe" Shakespeare explains as 
"the commoner kinds of ranunculus." 

^ "A Dirge" \n Juvenilia, stanza v. 



L58 NATURAL HISTORY 

which some called the "cuckoo gilliflower," and this 
led at once to its being confused with the red campion 
of the hedges and fields, which is more regularly 
known as Flos cuculi or cuckoo-flower. Even in 
Shakespeare's time, however, there was a third com- 
petitor for the name. We learn from Gerard that people 
were beginning to think that the pale meadow-cress 
was the real cuckoo-flower, because it bloomed in April 
and May, "when the Cuckow doth begin to sing her 
pleasant notes without stammering "; ^ and Tennyson 
brought sufficient authority from Lincolnshire to estab- 
lish the name among us, as witness his pale Margaret's 
" melancholy sweet and frail as perfume of the cuckoo- 
flower," while the May Queen's song tells us how the 
honeysuckle 

" round the porch has wov'n its wavy bowers, 
And by the meadow-trenches blow the faint sweet cuckoo- 
flowers." 

Shakespeare preferred to use the name for the red 

flowers in the high-grown wheat, as when old King 

Lear passes, 

" singing aloud ; 

Crown'd with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds, 

With burdocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers, 

Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow 

In our sustaining corn."^ 

For the children's buttercups, or butter-flowers, Shake- 
speare had the old name of the cuckoo-bud, but for 
the pale meadow-cress he used the Warwickshire word. 
Gerard claimed to have been the person who taught 
the Londoners that the "faint bloom" was the lady- 
smock: " They are commonly called ... in North- 
folke, Caunterburie bels : at the Namptwich in Cheshire 
where I had my beginning, Ladie smocks, which hath 
given me cause to christen it after my countrie fashion. " ^ 

^ Gerard, m.s., 1597, lib. 2, cap. 18, p. 203. ^ King Lear, iv. 4, 2-6. 

^ Gerard, u.s. 



CUCKOO-FLOWERS AND MARIGOLDS 159 

But Shakespeare was beforehand with him, and taught 
his public their rustic lesson in Love's Labour's Lost. 
" Will you hear the dialogue that the two learned men 
have compiled in praise of the owl and the cuckoo? 

When daisies pied and violets blue 
And lady-smocks all silver-white 

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue 

Do paint the meadows with delight."^ 

The poets have always loved the wild marigold as 
the true "heliotrope" or "girasol," and faithful fol- 
lower of the sun. Her petals droop and close as his 
steeds reach their western meadows ; then Aurora 
throws open her red-rose gate, 

"And winking Mary-buds begin 
To ope their golden eyes." ^ 

The legend was prettily used in The Spanish Gipsy, 
written in part by that William Rowley who was said 
to have been Shakespeare's friend. A tawny chieftain 
is blessing a young pair who make vows on a garland 
of flowers ; the gipsy-man is to be the sun and his bride 
the obsequious flower : — 

" She to you the Marigold, 
To none but you her leaves unfold."^ 

Shakespeare has compared the sensitive blossoms to 
court-favours that bask in a smile, and are frozen in a 
moment by cold looks : — 

" Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread 
But as the marigold at the sun's eye, 
And in themselves their pride lies buried, 
For at a frown they in their glory die."* 

Another writer of that time protested that the sweet 
"Caltha" of the poets stands up and braves "Sir 

^ Love's Labot(rs Lost, U.S. ,8g^-6,goL[-'j. ^ Cymbeline, ii. 3, 25-6. 

■'^ Spanish Gipsy, 1653, act iv. sc. i. ^ Sonnet xxv, 5-8. 



i6o NATURAL HISTORY 

Phoebus," and "seconds him" as a rival both at morn- 
ing and night, "setting the silly sun-burnt god at 
scorn " : 

"Who in the morning spreads her yellow hair 
Like to the blaze of golden Phcebus bright : 

That makes the heavenly climes to shine so clear, 
Illuminating all the world with light, 

So shines my Marygold so fair in sight ; 
Till in the dark when as the day is done, 
She closeth up and setteth with the Sun."^ 

Thus far sings Thomas Cutwode, or " Cutwode 
Lyte," as some called him, from his imitations of 
Mr. Lyte of Lyte's Gary, the eminent botanist. The 
marigold, in fact, was one of the commonest of weeds, 
and was flaunted by the early ballad-writers, because' 
it met their eyes in every corn-field. " Golds " was the 
common name, and it was the farmer's task in June 
to clear the ground of the branching growth that 
threatened the life of his crop. "Golds hath a short 
jagged leaf, and groweth half a yard high, and hath 
a yellow flower as broad as a groat, and is an ill weed, 
and groweth commonly in barley and peas."^ We 
may quote a passage from Mr. Loveday's Tour, as 
printed by the Roxburghe Club. Writing in 1732, he 
says of the Scottish farmers: "Their country cannot 
reproach them for lack of culture : the cold North 
produces extreme good oats, and that chiefly : Gule, a 
yellow flower, grows among their corn and in above 
a double proportion to it : they pretend that 'tis im- 
possible to clear the ground of this incroaching weed." ^ 

The darnel, another of Shakespeare's idle weeds,* 

^ Thomas Cutwode, Caltha Poetantm, 1599, stt. 19-20. In the orig-inal 
text the reading- is, "when as the day is dun," which may be an amiable 
conceit of the poet, playfully allying " dun " with " dark." 

^ Fitzherbert, Booke of Husbandrie, §20, p. 30. 

•* Diary of a Tour in iyj2, by John Loveday, ed. J. E. T. Loveday, 
Edinburgh, 1890, p. 162. 

^ King Lear, u.s. Henry V., v. 2, 45. 



WEEDS i6i 

was also a parasite of the barley, abounding in the 
fields, "especially in a moist and dankish soil."^ 
Some thought that it was a kind of degenerate 
barley, and like the cockle, it possessed a redeeming 
virtue in the fact that there was "much flour in that 
seed." 2 

The " rank fumiter," or fumitory,^ is another of the 
migrant weeds that follow the plough. As Linn^us 
said of the deadly henbane, the darnel and nettle and 
fumitory have lived as the companions of man since 
houses and fields were invented. The corn-field fumi- 
tory, with red waxy flowers, came probably with seed- 
corn from Sicily. Ray found a yellow-flowered kind, 
supposed to have been introduced by the Crusaders. 
It grew in several parts of Warwickshire, "ramping 
over walls and hedges," and by some of the roadsides 
he noticed a smaller variety with blossoms a greenish 
white. Among these gaudy weeds the "pale bleak 
pansy" makes little show; but it was always a favourite 
in Warwickshire, and Shakespeare has given it a place 
among the immortals. It is " a little western flower," 
King Oberon tells us, "and maidens call it "love-in- 
idleness."^ Mr. Ellacombe says that the name "love- 
in-idle " is said to be still used among Warwickshire 
rustics, with the meaning of " love in vain," or wasted 
affection.^ In Gerard's time the flower was known as 
" Harts ease, Pansies, Liue in Idlenes, Cull me to you, 
and three faces in a hood." ^ The name " heartsease " 
properly belonged to the yellow wall-flower, which was 
used as a cordial against melancholy. As for pansies, 
"that's for thoughts," said Ophelia;^ but "pansy" 
and "fancy" are not unlike in sound, and it was prob- 

^ Gerard, u.s., 1597, lib. i, cap. 51, p. 71. 
"^ Fitzherbert, u.s. 

' King Lear a.nd Henry V., u.s., p. 143. 
* Midswnnier Night' s Dream, ii. i, 166-8. 
^ H. N. Ellacombe, Plant Lore of Shakespeare, p. 151. 
" Gerard, ?/.s. , 1597, lib. 2, c. 299, p. 705. '^ Hamlet, iv. 5, 176-7. 

M 



i62 NATURAL HISTORY 

ably to this accident that the *' pretty Paunce " owed its 
" amatory character." 

Without following him too closely in his constant 
allusions to the fields and woods, we may note that 
Shakespeare evidently loved strength and brightness 
in his trees and flowers. He prefers the bold oxlip 
to the pale-faced company in the primrose path ; ^ the 
dim violets are loved for their marvellous sweetness, 
''sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes";^ his daffodils^ 
are not the twin-belled flowers of the south, but the old 
Crusader's daffodils, "white as the sun, though pale 
as a lily," which Ray found growing in crowds on his 
journeys through Arden. If we looked with the poet 
into the cottage gardens, we should find among the 
favourites the bright and jewelled Crown Imperial, the 
great Mary-lilies in sheaves, and the golden Flower-de- 
luce.* We pass with a brief reference to Caltha: — 

** Here could I set you down the honeysuckle, 
The pretty pink and purple pianet, 
The bugles, borage, and the bluebottle, 
The bonny belamour and violet."^ 

We might mention the pied gillyflowers, of which 
Perdita would have none in her garden,^ for the sake 
of Shakespeare's allusion to an odd fashion of his 
time. It was the rage to grow pinks and carnations in 
all sizes and colours. Gerard speaks in his Herbal of 
a violet " Gilloflower," of purple and yellow blooms,' 
and of " Pagiants or Pagion colour. Horse-flesh, 
blunket,"^ with a bewildering profusion of epithets. 
The gardeners, as Shakespeare has shown, professed 
to create all their varieties by grafting and change of 
soil ; but Ray learned in the next generation, from a 

1 Winter's Tale, iv. 4, 122-7. " Ibid., 120-2. 

3 Ibid., 119-20. * Ibid., 126-7. 

5 Caltha Poetarum, u.s., st. 24. ® Winters Tale, ii.s., 84-5. 

7 Gerard, tc.s., lib. 2, cap. 114, p. 373 (of Stocke Gilloflowers). 

^ Id., cap. 172, p. 472 (of Clove Gilloflowers). 



FOREST OF ARDEN 163 

Dutch farmer named Lauremberg, that the flowers 
were coloured red and green by watering the plants 
with certain chemicals for a month and preventing 
exposure to the dew. 



IV 

Warwickshire, according to the old topographers, 
was divided into the Fielden and the Wealden. South 
of Avon, said Speed, the land was tractable under 
cultivation, so "that the husbandman smileth in be- 
holding his paines, and the medowing pastures with 
their green mantles so imbrodered with flowers, that 
from Edg-hill wee may behold another Eden."'^ The 
Wealden was the woodland tract which is better known 
as Arden. "I learned at Warwick," wrote Leland, 
*'that the most part of the shire of Warwick, that 
lieth as Avon River descendeth on the right hand 
or ripe of it, is in Arden (for so is ancient name of 
that part of the shire)."'' It was a tradition in those 
parts that a squirrel might once have skipped from 
bough to bough across the whole breath of the county. 
But Leland, writing about 1540, noticed a rapid shrink- 
ing of the woods near Stratford.^ When he was 
exploring the country round Droitwich he remarked 
that '^ making of salt is a great and notable destruction 
of wood, and hath been, and shall be hereafter, except 
men use much coppices of young wood."^ The Act 
against the destruction of woods was passed soon 
afterwards ; but Leland remarks that the salt-boilers 
were fetching their wood from Arden, their wonted 
supplies having failed.^ He spoke about it to one of 

^ speed, Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, 1611, bk. i. , fol. 53. 

^ Leland, Itin., ed. Hearne, 1710-12, vol. iv. part ii. p. 51 (fol. 166 a). 

^ Leland, id.^ p, 53 (fol. 167b): "Little wood near in sight about 
Stratford." ^ Id., p. 87 (fol. 185 b). 

^ Ibid.: "They be forced to seek wood as far as Worcester, and all the 
parts about Bromsgrove, Alvechurch, and Alcester." 



i64 NATURAL HISTORY 

the salters at the pans.^ "I asked him how much 
wood he supposed yearly to be spent at the furnaces, 
and he answered that by estimate there was spent 
6,000 loads yearly. It is young pole-wood easy to 
be cloven." 

There were, after all, plenty of woods remaining a 
few years afterwards, when Shakespeare was young ; 
and we can see by many passages in the plays how 
fond he was of the high woods, and the open moors, 
and the rough sheep-farms set ''in the skirts of the 
forest, like fringe on a petticoat," 

Looking at certain words of Caliban, ^ we can perceive 

that the English landscape was in the background of 

the poet's mind, even as he wove a mirage of strange 

forms from Africa or the Atlantic Islands.^ The find- 

; ing a jay's nest shows that we are in the heart of some 

1 Midland wood. "Let me bring thee where crabs 

I grow," the monster whines; and the mind's eye sees 

I the wilding crab trees bowed down with red and 

I yellow fruit by the side of a glade in the forest. 

f "And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts"; 

I and the phrase at least takes us far from the Atlantic, 

I and into the old English pastures on a sandy soil 

where the " kipper-nuts" grew. These were the roots 

I of the drooping plant, looking like large parsley, which 

I is still esteemed a treasure by schoolboys. The root 

I was once considered a delicacy when boiled, or served 

\ with pepper in hot gravy. In Shakespeare's time, we 

\ are told, these plants grew in pastures and corn-fields 

\ "almost everywhere";* but we may observe that the 

"earth-nut" of the chalk soils belonged to a separate 

\ variety. "There is a field," says Gerard, "adjoining 

1 Ibid..- "The people that be about the furnaces be very ill coloured." 

^ Tempest, ii. 2, 171-6. 

3 So Mr. Morton Luce, ti.s., Introduction, p. xvii : "There is the smallest 
possible proportion of local ' fauna and flora,' just enough to place the 
spot somewhere beyond seas, and the rest is Stratford-on-Avon, or at 
most England." ■* Gerard, ti.s., lib. 2, cap. 415, p. 906. 



SHAKESPEARE'S ARDEN 165 

to Highgate, on the right side of the middle of the 
village, covered over with the same : and likewise in 
the next field unto the conduit heads by Maribone, neer 
the way that leadeth to Paddington by London, and in 
divers other places." ^ 

The " Arden "of As You Like It was a mere region 
of romance, belonging to King Oberon's friend, the 
good Sir Huon of Bordeaux. The name was derived 
from the Belgian Ardennes, and it might no doubt be 
connected in some slight degree with our Warwick- 
shire Arden. We may fairly suppose in each case 
that the title of the district was given by its Celtic 
occupants, and that the tribes were equally devoted 
to the cult of the huntress Arduinna, or "Diana of 
Arden." But there is little historical precision in the 
play, or in Lodge's novel of Rosalynde, on which its 
incidents were based. 

In Lodge's version the scene is transferred to the 
hot south ; the lovers hang their scrolls upon stone- 
pines, and sing madrigals under fig trees and pome- 
granates. But Shakespeare is always thinking of his 
English Arden, and brings the merry company back 
to the fern-brakes and the shade of the greenwood 
tree. The Duke is like the Earl in Lincoln green 
whose mates were Scarlet and Little John. 

"There they live like the old Robin Hood of England : they 
say many young gentlemen flock to him every day, and 
fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden 
world." 2 

The scenery, indeed, is mixed up in a perplexing 
way. A painted snake slips into the bush by the 
sleeping Orlando : — 

" under which bush's shade 
A lioness, with udders all drawn dry, 
Lay couching, head on ground."^ 

1 Gerard, ibid, (of Earth Nut, Earth Chestnut, or Kipper Nut). 
^ As You Like It, i. i, 122-5. ^ ■^'^•j i^* 3> 109-16. 



i66 NATURAL HISTORY 

When Oliver loses his way, he mixes the terms of 
English woodcraft with the description of an Italian 

farm : — 

" Pray you, if you know, 
Where in the purlieus of this forest stands 
A sheep-cote fenced about with olive-trees ? " ^ 

Rosalind finds her copy of verses hung on a palm, 
instead of being carved on a pine, as in the older 
story. ''Look here what I found on a palm tree!"^ 
But this is no palm tree of the south ; it is the satiny 
palm or sallow, which decked the Warwickshire 
churches and "made the country-houses gay." In the 
tract called The Supplication of the Poor Commons, 
there is a delightful picture of river scenery which, 
with slight alterations, might have been applied to 
Shakespeare's home. A traveller is supposed to have 
espied a fair church, standing in this case on a hill, 
and pleasantly set round with groves and fields : "the 
goodly green meadows lying beneath, by the banks of 
a crystalline river, garnished with willows, poplars, 
palm trees, and alders, most beautiful to behold." 

Shakespeare showed his thorough knowledge of the 
woodlands by his accurate rendering of the terms of 
the chace. If we consult the great work on Forest 
Law, we shall find that he gives them the exact mean- 
ing in which they were used by the Forest-judge at 
his Justice-seat. No purlieu-man, for example, was 
allowed to circumvent or "fore-stall" the deer:^ "they 
may not fore-stall, but only let slip at the tail " ; but it 
was a common practice to get the wind of the game 
and drive it back to some gap where the nets and toils 

1 Id., iv. 3, 76-8. 

2 Id., iii. 2, 185-6. See Rosalynde, ed. H. Morley, 1893, p. 49: "Where 
they found carved in the bark of a phie tree this passion." p. 50: "Yonder 
be characters graven upon the bark of the tall beech tree." p. 82 : " He 
engraved with his knife on the bark of a myrrh tree, this pretty estimate 
of his mistress's perfection." 

^ Manwood, Treatise of the Forest Laivs^ ed. Nelson, 1717. 



SPORTING TERMS IN SHAKESPEARE 167 

had been pitched. Just so the King of Denmark 
speaks of being ''fore-stalled ere we come to fall:"^ 
and Hamlet himself cries to Guildenstern, " Why do 
you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you 
would drive me into a toil?"^ Again, in Love's 
Labour's Lost, we find a more complicated allusion to 
the practice : — 

"The king he is hunting the deer; I am coursing myself: 
they have pitched a toil : I am toiling in a pitch, — pitch 
that defiles." 3 

Serjeant Manwood gave lists of the "apt and meet 
terms" belonging to the beasts of the chace. "You 
shall say," he teaches us, "Dislodge the Buck!" 
Turning to Shakespeare we read : — 

" The Volscians are dislodged, and Marcius gone : 
A merrier day did never yet greet Rome." ^ 

Again, "You shall say Bolt the Cony!" In Cymbe- 
line we find the "bolt of nothing, shot at nothing, 
which the brain makes of fumes." ^ One might 
either uncape or unkennel the fox : and Hamlet speaks 
of occulted guilt unkenneling itself in a speech ; ^ 
and there is Mr. Ford of Windsor, with his "Search, 
seek, find out : I'll warrant we'll unkennel the fox. 
Let me stop this way first. So now, uncape." '' 
When the chace is over, said the learned Serjeant, 
you shall say, "the Deer is broken," or "the Fox 
is cased." We might add a reference to the famous 
maxim of " First case your hare" ; and when Parolles 
has been "smoked" by old Lafeu, the French lords 
vow "You shall see his fall to-night. . . . We'll make 
you some sport with the fox ere we case him."^ 

^ Hamlet, iii. 3, 49. ^ Id., iii. 2, 361-2. 

^ Love's Labour s Lost, iv. 3, 1-3. ■* Coriolamis, v. 4, 44-5. 

^ Cymheline, iv. 2, 300-1. ^ Hamlet, iii. 2, 85-6. 

^ Merry Wives of Windsor, iii. 3, 173-6. 

8 All's Well that Ends Well, iii. 6, 108, iio-ii : see Manwood, u,s,, 
suh Buck, Fox, etc. 



i68 NATURAL HISTORY 

It is clear that Shakespeare was familiar with the 
Cotswold sports, which were founded, indeed, by 
Robert Dover, a lawyer of Barton-on-the-Heath. 
Young Slender seems to know something about grey- 
hounds : "How does your fallow greyhound, sir? I 
heard say he was outrun on Cotsall." "Sir, he's a 
good dog and a fair dog : can there be more said ? 
he is good and fair." ^ Anyone again who lived 
within sound and smell of Paris Garden, and had 
"seen Sackerson loose "^ and held him by the chain, 
would know all about the "robustious and rough 
coming on" of the mastiff,^ and bulldogs that "run 
winking into the mouth of a Russian bear, and have 
their heads crushed like rotten apples."* Among the 
Royal Archives of Denmark is a volume of travels by 
Jean Fontaine and Louis Schonbub, written in 1630, 
which contains passages illustrating the history of 
public amusements. They seem to be as applicable 
to Shakespeare's friends at the Globe as to the House 
at Blackfriars, with which they chiefly deal. The 
travellers write to the effect that everyone ought to see 
the theatres kept up for comedies, bears, bulls, dogs, 
and cock-fights: "in all these places fine tragedies 
and comedies are played, and the beast-fights are 
agreeable spectacles : and there are men and women 
who for a penny will bring one tobacco and beer." 



V 

But we must return to the woodlands of Arden and 
Shakespeare's own knowledge of the hunter's craft. 
One may notice how Prince Hal uses a technical 
phrase in rating Bardolph : "O villain, thou stolest a 
cup of sack eighteen years ago, and wert taken with 
the manner."^ To be taken with the manner, or 

^ Merry Wives of Windsor, i. i, 91-2, 98-9. ^ Ibid., 307. 

^ Henry V., iii. 7, 159. * Ibid., 153-5. * i Henry IV., ii. 4, 345-7. 



SHAKESPEARE AND THE CHACE 169 

"mainour," meant that a trespasser was caught in an 
offence against the vert or venison of the forest. With 
respect to the deer in particular, it implied that the 
offender was guilty in woodland language of "back- 
bare, bloody-hand, or dog-draw or stable-stand." 
Dog-draw was the charge when a man had shot at a 
deer and had a dog drawing after the wounded game. 
The last-named offence consisted in standing by a tree 
with bow bent or greyhounds in leash. ^ 

The legitimate way of shooting from the stand is 
described in the last part oi Henry VI., where Sinklow 
and Humphrey come on dressed as Keepers of a Chace 
with cross-bows in hand.^^ Their talk shows them not 
to have been much better shots than the sportsmen 
in As You Like It, who, as the Duke said, gored the 
haunches of the dappled fools with their fork-headed 
arrows.^ Sinklow, who appears by the First Folio to 
have taken the part of the Head-keeper, proposes that 
they shall both shoot at the same buck : 

" And In this covert will we make our stand. 
Culling the principal of all the deer." ^ 

"That cannot be," says the other, "the noise of thy 
cross-bow will scare the herd " ; and so they talk till 
the quondmn King comes in, "a deer whose skin is a 
keeper's fee.""^ 

We turn to the gayer scene in Love's Labow^s Lost, 
when the Princess gained such "credit in the shoot. "^ 

" Then, forester, my friend, where is the bush 
That we must stand and play the murderer in ? " ^ 

We know how the poor little animal was knocked over, 
and what a discussion arose about his age.^ The argu- 
ment seems to be taken from Manwood, whose firstsketch 
of a work on Forest Law was passing about in manuscript 

^ Manwood, ti.s., sub Hunting. ^ As You Like It, ii. i, 22-5. 

'^ 3 Henry VI,, iii. i, 3-7. ^ Ibid., 22-3. 

•^ Love's Labour's Lost, iv. i, 26. ^ Ibid., 7, 8. ^ Ibid., iv. sc. 2. 



lyo NATURAL HISTORY 

long before the first appearance of his treatise in 1598. 
As concerning Beasts of Chace, said the learned 
Serjeant, the Buck, being the first, is called as 
followeth : the first year a Fawn, the second year a 
Pricket, the third a Sorel, the fourth year a Sore, the 
fifth year a Buck of the first head, the sixth a Buck 
or a Great Buck. ^ "Truly, Master Holofernes, the 
epithets are sweetly varied, like a scholar at the least : 
but, sir, I assure ye, it was a buck of the first head." 
"Sir Nathaniel," says the Schoolmaster, '■'■ Haud credo'''' \ 
but honest Dull, the constable, breaks in, "'Twas not a 
Hand credo; 'twas a pricket" j^ and again, later on, he 
insists again that it was a pricket that the Princess had 
killed. 3 " Will you hear an extemporal epitaph on the 
death of the deer? And, to humour the ignorant, call I 
the deer the princess killed a pricket."^ The solemn 
sentences of Manwood are built into a rude kind of 
rhyme : — 

"The preyful princess pierced and prick'd a pretty pleasing 
pricket ; 
Some say a sore ; but not a sore, till now made sore 
with shooting. 
The dogs did yell : put L to sore, then sorel jumps from 
thicket ; 
Or pricket, sore, or else sorel ; the people fall a-hooting. 
If sore be sore, then L to sore makes fifty sores, one sorel, 
Of one sore I an hundred make by adding but one more 

It has been said that Shakespeare can have had little 
affection for dogs, and allows his characters to rate them 
as curs and mongrels on very slight provocation, as if 
they were all "creatures vile," and dogs of no esteem. 
We may enter a protest in favour of " Crab my dog " ; ^ 
and one might point out that old Lear talked of the 
house-pets with some slight show of affection: "the 

^ Manwood, ii.s., sub Buck, '^ Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 2, 8-12. 

^ Ibid., 21-2. ** Ibid., 50-3, et seqq. 

^ Two Gentlemeii of Verona, ii. 3 ; iv. 4. 



DOGS IN SHAKESPEARE 171 

little dogs and all, Tray, Blanch, and Sweet-heart, see, 
they bark at me ! "^ But whether Shakespeare's likings 
extended to '' Lady, the brach," ^ and the toy-terriers, or 
was confined to the generous hound, we must acknow- 
ledge that no writer of that time surpassed him in 
knowledge of the subject. In the year 1536, Dr. Caius 
published his Latin tract about British Dogs in the form 
of a letter to Gesner the naturalist.^ There are passages 
in the work, chiefly in the notices of foreign breeds, 
which may be useful to students of Shakespeare : such, 
for instance, is his account of the Maltese lapdogs, 
which might, he thought, be carried for warmth, instead 
of a muff or waistcoat ; and such is his picture of the 
Icelandic and Pomeranian dogs with face and body all 
covered with hair. We hear something about these 
last when the ruffians fall out in Henry F. : " Pish ! " 
said Nym. '' Pish for thee, Iceland dog ! thou prick- 
ear'd cur of Iceland!"^ is the retort of Ancient Pistol. 
Dr. Caius divided the British varieties into three 
principal kinds.^ He takes first the generous breeds 
used in the chace. The harrier comes first, he says ; but 
he used the word in a wide sense, for his "harriers" 
will hunt the fox, the red and fallow deer, the badger, 
and the marten ; next come terriers, and then the blood- 
hound, flap-eared and with lips in deep flews. Among 
the bloodhounds he places otter-hounds and ordinary 
fox-hounds, and is particular to keep the word " brach " 
for the female, contrary to the usage adopted by 
Shakespeare. Next we come to the greyhound class, 
in which may be set lym-hounds^ and gaze-hounds, 

^ Khig Lear, iii. 6, 65-6. 

"^ Id., i. 4, 125. Also I Henry IV., iii. i, 240. 

^ English translation (1576) by Abraham Fleming, printed in Arber's 
English Garner, iii. 225-68. 

■* Hejiry V., ii. i, 43-4. 

^ The tract is divided into five sections ; viz. §§ 1-3, Gentle dogs, 
serving the game; §4, Homely dogs, apt for sundry necessary uses; 
§ 5, Currish dogs, meet for many toys. 

'° " Leviner or Lyemmer ; in Latin, Lorarius." 



172 NATURAL HISTORY 

Irish deer-hounds, lurchers, and the miniature tumblers. 
Of the dogs used in fowling we have hern-dogs, and 
spaniels, setters, and water-spaniels or retrievers, which 
used to be shaved like French poodles. His second 
class takes in the rustic sheep-dogs and house-dogs, the 
mastiff, sometimes used in hunting "wild swine," the 
butcher's bull-dog, the useful creatures that drew water, 
pulled little carts, or carried the tinker's stock, and the 
farmer's dog, that barks at beggars, with other ''defend- 
ing dogs " ; he even takes care to describe the " moon- 
dog," which does nothing but " bay the moon."^ The 
third and last class takes in the useful turnspits and 
dancing-dogs, with a crowd of mongrels of all kinds. 
With this curious list we should compare the catalogue 
of dogs in Macbeth, adding for the sake of completeness 
the bob-tail tyke and trundletail, from Edgar's song in 
King Lear. ^ ''We are men, my liege," says the first 
murderer in Macbeth, and this is the tyrant's reply : — 

"Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men ; 

As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, 

Shoughs, water-rugs and demi-wolves are clept 

All by the name of dogs : the valued file 

Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle, 
j The housekeeper, the hunter, every one 
1 According to the gift which bounteous nature 

Hath in him closed, whereby he does receive 

Particular addition, from the bill 

That writes them all alike. "^ 

There are hunting scenes in Venus and Adonis and 
in the induction to The Taming of the Shrew which are 
so lifelike, that one might almost describe the look of 
the pack and name the country where it was running. 
The very names of the hounds will in some cases indi- 

^ "He doth nothing- else but watch and ward at an ynche, wasting the 
wearisome night season without slumbering' or sleeping ; bawing and 
wawing at the moon (that I may use the word of Nonius) ; a quality in 
mine opinion strange to consider." 

2 King Lear., iii. 6, 69-76. ^ Macbeth, iii. i, 91-101. 



SHAKESPEARE'S HUNTING SCENES 173 

cate their breed, and the sound of their "gallant 
chiding " ; ^ and we shall find, as in the hunt described 
by Sidney in the Arcadia^ that ''their cry was com- 
posed of so well sorted mouths, that any man would 
perceive therein some kind of proportion, but the 
skilful woodmen did find a musick."^ 

" Every region near 
Seemed all one mutual cry,"^ 

says the Amazon Queen, who had bayed the bear with 
Hercules and Cadmus. "The Wood," wrote Sidney, 
"seemed to conspire with them against his own citizens, 
dispensing their noise through all his quarters, and 
even the Nymph Echo left to bewail the loss of Nar- 
cissus, and became a hunter."^ Shakespeare uses the 
same image in his description of the fate of "poor 
Wat,"^ or "wily Wat," or "gentle Wat with long 
ears," as various ballad-writers had called him. The 
hunted hare has "cranks and crosses with a thousand 
doubles"; his "many musets" "are like a labyrinth to 
amaze his foes " ; he runs among the sheep and the 
deer, and the banks "where earth-delving conies 
keep," and the scent-snuffing hounds run silent, 

" till they have singled 
With much ado the cold fault cleanly out ; 
Then do they spend their mouths : Echo replies, 
As if another chase were in the skies. "^ 

"Tender well my hounds," the hunting lord calls out 
to his whips on Wilmcote Heath : 

" Brach Merriman, the poor cur is emboss'd ; 
And couple Clowder with the deep-mouthed brach."''' 

He uses a word more appropriate to a blown stag or 
wild-boar than to a footsore hound ; the old sporting 

^ Midsumvier Night' s Dream, iv. i, 119. 

^ Arcadia, bk. i. (loth ed., 1655, p. 34). 

^ Midsummer Night's Dream, iv. i, 120-1. ■* Arcadia, u.s. 

^ Venus and Adonis, 697. ® Ibid., 679-96. 

"^ Tayning of the Shrew , Ind. i, 16-18. 



174 NATURAL HISTORY 

books tell us that the deer is said to be *' embossed" 
when he creeps into holes and lies down, or when 
he runs "stiff and lumbering," and slavers and foams 
at the mouth, with other signs of fatigue. Looking 
through the park at Wilmcote with the "hunting lord" 
and his whips, we notice that "Silver" is especially 
praised : — 

'* Saw'st thou not, boy, how Silver made it good, 
At the hedge-corner, in the coldest fault? " ^ 

"Silver" appears again in The Tempest, when Ariel 
hunts the rascals with his visionary pack. 

"Silver! there it goes. Silver! Fury, Fury! there, Tyrant, 
there ! " 2 

These latter we take as representing the black, or 
black-and-tan hounds, like the western slow-hounds, 
which were valued not only for their keen scent, but 
for giving tongue in a deep, bell-like note : as when 
the Goddess knows that some rough beast is found, 
from the cry remaining in one place, and finds a 
favourite hound of Adonis howling by himself in a 
brake. When he has ceased his din, 

" Another flap-mouth'd mourner, black and grim. 
Against the welkin volleys out his voice ; 
Another and another answer him."^ 

But "Silver" was, of course, one of the slender, short 
hounds, white in colour, with black ears and a black 
spot on the back, which were the direct descendants of 
the old milk-white English talbot. The rule for the 
Midland counties, according to the School of Recreation, 
was to use a middle-sized hound, " of a more nimble 
Composure than" the slow-hound "and fitter for 
Chase." For strength of cry the huntsman was told 
to choose "the Loud Clanging (redoubling as it 

^ Ibid., 19-20. ^ Tempest, iv. i, 257-8. 

^ Venus and Adonis, 920-2. 



VARIETIES OF HOUNDS 175 

were) Mouth, and to this put the roaring, spending, 
and whining Mouth, which will be loud, smart, and 
pleasant " ; and such, said the writer, were the Wor- 
cestershire packs in his day. Some men loved most 
to watch "cunning hunting" ; others thought of little 
but the "musical discord" and "sweet thunder" of 
the hounds. For sweetness of cry they "compounded 
the kennel" of a few large hounds "of deep solemn 
Mouths, and swift in spending, as the Base in the 
Consort"; then for a Counter-tenor, twice as many 
"roaring, loud, ringing Mouths" ; add some "hollow 
plain, sweet Mouths " for the Mean ; and so shall your 
Cry be perfect. Moreover, let the deep-mouthed 
hounds be swift of their kind, the middle-sized ones 
rather slow, like " Echo " in the Wilmcote pack ; when 
" Belman " is praised as better than "Silver," the 
lord cries, "Thou art a fool: if Echo were as fleet I 
would esteem him worth a dozen such."^ Lastly, the 
white, sweet-tongued hounds were to be as slender and 
short-legged as might be ; and by taking care of these 
points, says the instructor, the pack will be made to 
" run even together." ' 

In Cheshire and some other districts, where the coun- 
try was nearly covered with woods, it was necessary 
to use large and heavy hounds, with hardly any im- 
provement upon the old slow-hound stock from which 
they were originally derived. This seems to be the 
breed which Theseus praised to Hippolyta when they 
rode after a great hart on the first morning in May. 
We see the influence of Chaucer in the reference to 
Cadmus and to the joy of Duke Theseus in his hounds. 
Hunting, as the Knight's Tale has it, was "all his 
joye and appetyt " ; ^ and Shakespeare seems to rejoice 

^ Taming of the Shrew, Ind. i, 22-7. 

^ The School of Recreation ; or, a Gniide to the Most Ingenious Exercises 
of Hunting, etc., by R. H., 1732, pp. 9-11. 

•* Chaucer, Knightes Tale, 822 \Cant. Tales, A. 1680]. 



176 NATURAL HISTORY 

with him, as he traces the pedigree from the famous 
pack that " found the bear " for Hercules : — 

'* My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, 
So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung 
With ears, that sweep away the morning dew ; 
Crook-knee'd, and dewlapp'd Hke Thessalian bulls ; 
Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells. 
Each under each." ^ 

If we look at Robert Greene's Menaphon, we shall 
find a youngster of Thessaly debating with the Ar- 
cadian shepherds. They are talking of a ewe, " whose 
fleece was as white as the hairs that grow on father 
Boreas' chin, or as the dangling dewlap of the silver 
bull."^ On so slight a framework of materials Shake- 
speare raised his marvellous work ; and so easily were 
all kinds of knowledge taken up by him, that we might 
easily believe, in reference to the passage quoted above, 
that he used the old anecdote of Queen Elizabeth, which 
was preserved by Anthony Wood. Richard Edwards, 
we are told, produced his Palamon and Arcyte in 1566,^ 
though the comedy was not published till 1585. The 
comedy was acted before the Queen, in Christchurch 
Hall, at Oxford. In the play was acted a cry of 
hounds in the *' quadrant," "upon the train of a fox," 
during the hunting of Theseus, "with which the young 
scholars who stood in the windows were so much taken 
(supposing it was real) that they cried out, ' Now now 
— there there — he's caught, he's caught.' All which 
the Queen merrily beholding said, ' O excellent ! those 
boys in very troth are ready to leap out of the windows 
to follow the hounds ! ' " * 

1 Midsummer Night's Dreani^'w, i, 123-8. 
^ GveQne, Menaphon, u.s., p. 74. 

^ Collier, Annals, i. 191 (ed. 1831), g-ives date September 3rd, 1566. 
^ Anthony Wood, Hist, and Ant. of the University of Oxford, ed. 
J. Gutch, 1796, ii. 160. 



LANDMARKS ON THE STRATFORD 
ROAD AND IN LONDON 

1586-1616 




LANDMAHKS ON THE STRATFORD 
ROAD AND IN LONDON 

1586-1616 



I 

Shakespeare's journey to London (c. 1586) 

WE have no precise information as to Shake- 
speare's first settlement in London ; but the 
evidence, as a whole, is in favour of his having left 
Stratford in the year 1586. We may fairly suppose 
that his journey would be made during the spring so 
as to avoid the difficulties of winter travelling, and to 
secure employment for the busy time of the year. In 
the region of conjecture, Malone's speculations are not 
without interest.^ He seems to have felt a shock at 
the notion that the son of Mr. Shakespeare, Alderman 
and sometime High Bailiff of the Borough, might 
have made but a poor appearance when he first offered 
himself at the playhouse door. He thought that the 
poet might have been helped by his friend, Richard 
Quiney, who wrote in such an affectionate strain from 
the " Bell," when he came to town on a later occasion. 
Was not this Richard, his schoolfellow, remarkably 

^ Malone, Shakespeare, ed. Boswell, 1821, ii. 164-7. 
179 



i8o LANDMARKS ON STRATFORD ROAD 

clever and forward in his Latin, and did he not after- 
wards serve in the shop where Mrs. Mary Shakespeare 
dealt for her groceries? Malone supposed that Richard 
or his father, Adrian Quiney, would have supplied 
young Shakespeare with an introduction to Mr. 
Bartholomew Quiney, who kept a draper's store near 
the carved stone conduit in Fleet Street. So far as 
we know, however, there was no connection between 
the Stratford tradesman and the London merchant, 
except, indeed, that they may both have derived their 
descent from the stock of Quineys in the Isle of Man. 
Malone returns to the charge with a second argu- 
ment. Richard Field, the son of Mr. Field, a tanner 
at Stratford, had established himself as a printer 
in London. He it was who brought out Venus and 
Adonis in 1593, and Lucrece in the following year; 
his friend and collaborator, Harrison, published the 
•little books at the sign of the '* White Greyhound," 
near St. Paul's. Are we to suppose, suggests Malone, 
that Mr. Richard Field would not have rescued 
Shakespeare from poverty, or would have allowed "an 
amiable and worthy youth " to remain in so degraded 
a state? He is referring, of course, to the story about 
holding the horses. It was for Malone to find evi- 
dence for his own suggestion. We can neither affirm 
nor deny that the poet brought a letter of introduction 
to the printer. The critic himself rather preferred the 
notion that Shakespeare's movements were governed 
by his having formed some acquaintance with Lord 
Warwick's or Lord Leicester's servants, or the Queen's 
company of comedians. "It is, I think, much more 
probable that his own lively disposition made him 
acquainted with some of the principal performers who 
visited Stratford, the elder Burbage, or Knell, or 
Bentley." James Burbage was the builder and manager 
of the chief London theatre, where Lord Leicester's 
players were then engaged. Shakespeare, we are told. 



SHAKESPEARE'S JOURNEY TO LONDON i8i 

might have enrolled himself among the players, and 
may have arrived at his new home in company with the 
"tragedians of the City." 

Malone also said that the Sadlers would have been 
sure to help a friend. Hamnet Sadler, as Mr. Hunter 
showed, was connected with Hamlet Smith, whose 
sister Helen was settled in London.^ She was married 
to Mr. Stephen Scudamore, otherwise Skidmore, a 
vintner at St. Stephen's, Coleman Street. Mr. Scuda- 
more was rich himself, and was said to be related to 
Sir Clement Scudamore, one of the wealthiest of the 
City merchants. But, unfortunately for the theory, it 
is plain from the Vintners' records that *' Stephen 
Skidmore" died in 1584, leaving property at St. 
Anne's, Blackfriars, to his Company on various chari- 
table trusts. Mr. Hunter also examined the story of 
John Sadler, who became partner with Richard Quiney 
in the grocer's shop at Bucklersbury.^ John Sadler 
seems to have been a nephew of Hamnet and Judith. 
His father had become impoverished by good living 
and hospitality, and he hoped to restore the family by 
marrying his son John to a good fortune. Hunter 
found the details in a book, published in 1690, upon 
''The Holy Life of Mrs. Elizabeth Walker, late wife 
of A. W[alker], d.d., rector of Fyfield in Essex." 
Mrs. Walker, he says, was John Sadler's daughter, 
and a great part of the book consists of extracts "from 
her old manuscript remains."^ Young John was 
romantic, or attached elsewhere, and contrived to 
make his escape. His father, as Mrs. Walker told the 
story, "provided him good clothes, a good horse, and 
money in his purse, and sent him to make his ad- 
dresses to the gentlewoman in the country. But he, 
considering well how difficult a married condition was 

^ Joseph Hunter, f.s.a., Neio Illustrations of the Life, etc., of Shake- 
speare, 1845, i. 52, note. His authority was the will of Helen Scudamore, 
1606. 2 jj){(i_^ 69. 2 Ibid., 69-70, note. 



i82 LANDMARKS ON STRATFORD ROAD 

like to prove, instead of going awooing joined himself 
to the carrier and came to London, where he had never 
been before, and sold his horse in Smithfield." If we 
follow the teaching of Sir John Falstaff, one would 
buy a rogue like Bardolph at Paul's, and he would 
buy his master a nag on a Friday morning at Smith- 
field Market ; if he could add a wife from Bankside, 
then were one "manned, horsed, and wived." ^ 

John Sadler had no acquaintance in London "to 
recommend or assist him." We may observe that 
Mrs. Helen Scudamore did not die before 1606 ; but 
her relationship to the young adventurer may have 
been too remote for his purpose. He wandered from 
street to street and house to house, asking if they 
wanted an apprentice; "and though he met with 
many discouraging scorns and a thousand denials, he 
went till he light on Mr. Brooksbank, a grocer in 
Bucklersbury."^ 

II 

THE ROAD TO LONDON — ROLLRIGHT STONES — GRENDON UNDER- 
WOOD— AYLESBURY TO UXBRIDGE. 

Shakespeare, it has been suggested, may have gone 
through a similar experience. It is not improbable, at 
any rate, that he would hang on to the Stratford 
carriers for security against the Clerks of St. Nicholas, 
like the rich yeoman in Henry IV., and the travellers 
who breakfasted off eggs and butter. ^ The road by 
which he journeyed to London has been described by 
many travellers before and since his day. The direct 
way lay S.S.E. of Stratford, through Shipston-on- 
Stour. After passing through this almost isolated 

^ 2 Henry IV., i. 2, 58-61. See Nares' Glossary, ed. Halliwell and 
Wright, s.v. PAUL'S, ST. ^ Hunter, u.s. 

^ I Henry IV., ii. i. An alternative route to the road hereafter de- 
scribed lay through Kineton and Banbury, joining the road from Shipston 
and Chipping Norton at Bicester. 



ROLLRIGHT STONES 183 

piece of Worcestershire, it recrossed the Stour into 
the southern corner of Warwickshire, and finally left 
the county for Oxfordshire a little beyond Long 
Compton. Just across the border, in Little Rollright 
parish, stood the famous stone-circle known as ''Roll- 
rich stones." Mr. Loveday, to whose English travels 
in the middle of the eighteenth century we already 
have referred,^ on his way from Oxford to Stratford, 
visited the stones. He and his companions went 
down hill from Chipping Norton to Long Comp- 
ton, a "truly long village," and made a detour to 
the circle. This, he writes, is "of no very regular 
figure " ; the tallest of the stones was about seven feet 
high, the others not above four and a half feet. A 
single stone on the other side of the hedge in War- 
wickshire, nine feet high and upwards, was called the 
King-stone, and was believed to mark the spot where 
Rollo the Norwegian had been crowned. About a fur- 
long to the east were five other large stones called the 
Knights which stood "rounding, as close together as 
can be without touching."^ Camden had given his 
high authority to the tradition about Rollo, which was 
in truth almost as absurd as the theory of the rustics 
in Shakespeare's day who believed that the monument 
consisted of men turned into stones, and gave the 
name of King to the tallest, " because he should have 
beene King of England (forsooth) if he had once 
seene Long Compton, a little towne so called lying 
beneath, and which a man, if he go some few pases 
forward, may see."^ 

1 Diary of a Tour in 1782, made by John Loveday of Caversham, ed. 
J. E. T. Loveday, 1890, p. 4. 

^ Hence known as the "Whispering Circle" (Virtue's National 
Gazetteer, iii. 339), or the "Whispering Knights" (Murray's Warwick- 
shire, 1899, p. 102.) 

^ Camden, Britannia, tr. Holland, 1610, p. 374. He continues, 
" Other five standing at the other side, touching as it were, one another, 
they imagine to have beene Knights mounted on horsebacke ; and the 
rest the army." He connected the Rollo tradition with the battle between 



i84 LANDMARKS ON STRATFORD ROAD 

From Long Compton it was a distance of four miles 
into Chipping Norton, where Mr. Loveday on his way- 
northward stayed at the "Talbot." The town, we are \ 
told, stands on the side of a somewhat steep hill. The ^ 
church is a large building in the bottom ; the middle 
aisle is almost all window ; there was a charnel-house 
at the north-east end of the church like the famous 
bonehouse at Stratford, which extended under the aisle 
and was entered from outside. Thence the road crossed 
Oxfordshire, keeping slightly to the south-east to 
Bicester. In Church-Enstone parish, some five miles 
out of Chipping Norton, a road forked off S.S.E. to 
Woodstock and Oxford ; this, in its turn, divided into 
branches in Kiddington parish, half-way to Woodstock. 
The left-hand branch kept to the east of Woodstock, 
and joined the direct road from Oxford to London, 
near Wheatley. 

The main road passed into Buckinghamshire a few 
miles beyond Bicester. Two or three miles across the 
border, on a side road, was a village which a slight 
tradition connects with the name of Shakespeare. 
Aubrey, in his casual notes on Shakespeare's life, 
writes: "The humour of . . . the constable, in Mzd- 
somernighfs Dreamey he happened to take at Grendon 
in Bucks — I thinke it was Midsomer night that he 
happened to lye there — which is the roade from London 
to Stratford, and there was living that constable about 
1642, when I first came to Oxon : Mr. Josias Howe 
is of that parish, and knew him."^ The Rev. Josias 

Eng-lish and Danes at Hook Norton in 917, and the subsequent battle 
at the Four-Shire-Stone not far distant. Long- Compton is situated 
about midway between these two battlefields. 

^ Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, 1898, ii. 226 {s.v. Shakespear). In 
connection with Josias Howe, we may notice Aubrey's story in his notes 
on Dr. Ralph Kettell, President of Trinity (id., ii. 23): " Mrls. Howe, 
of Grendon " — doubtless Josias' mother — " sent him (the president) a 
present of hippocris, and some fine cheese-cakes, by a plain countrey 
fellow, her servant. The Dr. tastes the wine : — ' What,' sayd he, ' didst 
thou take this drinke out of a ditch ? ' and when he saw the cheese- 



GRENDON UNDERWOOD 185 

Howe was a tutor at Trinity College, where he had 
been elected to a fellowship in 1637, about five years 
before Aubrey came up. He was a native of Grendon 
Underwood. The name of the village is sometimes 
written Crendon, and care should be taken not to 
confuse it with Long Crendon, near Thame, which 
lies a little north of the road from Aylesbury to Oxford, 
and is described in the life of Anthony Wood. The 
rector of Grendon, about the time of Aubrey's boy- 
hood, was the Rev. Thomas Howe, at whose house the 
tutor of Trinity was brought up. Josias was the rector's 
son, and would know the village well. He was a 
person of some culture and authority on matters of 
literature, having been introduced to Ben Jonson, and 
being the friend of Denham, Waller, and Shirley. 
When William Cartwright's plays and poems were 
published in 165 1, Howe's commendatory verses ap- 
peared in company with those of James Howell, Henry 
Vaughan the Silurist, and other distinguished Oxford 
men. 

Aubrey introduces his parenthesis about " Mid- 
somer night" with some hesitation. The journey to 
Stratford on Midsummer Day would have no relevance 
to the title of the play. It was the first of May when 
Theseus and Hippolyta rode hunting, as everyone had 
known since Chaucer's day ; and it was only by a magical 
glamour that Titania could sphere herself in summer 
weather, and call up pictures of the vintage and of the 
time of apricots and dew-berries. "A Midsummer 
Night's Dream" is only a title for a story told on velvet 
lawns and under the greenwood tree. Just in the same 
way, a "Winter's Tale" is one that might be told at 
Christmas in the blaze of the logs, about witches and 

cakes : — ' What have we here, crhiku^n, cranhum ? ' The poor fellow 
stared on him, and wondered at such a rough reception of such a hand- 
some present ; but he shortly made him amends with a good dinner and 
halfe-a-crowne. " 



i86 LANDMARKS ON STRATFORD ROAD 

ghosts, and "sad stories of the death of kings"; as 
Mr. Booth speaks, in his preface to Diodorus, of the 
children hearing a Winter Tale "and strange stories of 
this brave Hero and that mighty Giant, who did wonders 
in the Land of Utopia." Aubrey, at any rate, says 
that there was a constable, to whom something hap- 
pened which appears again in the story of the "hempen 
home-spuns " playing their interlude at Athens. The 
manuscript is imperfect, and the story, such as it was, 
is defaced. The Grendon people might find allusions 
to their church porch in Much Ado about Nothing: 
"Well, masters, we hear our charge: let us go sit here 
upon the church-bench till two, and then all to bed."^ 
Bernwood Forest may supply the original of Titania's 
bank "where the wild thyme blows. "- 

The taproom at the old Ship Inn, as we learn 
from an amusing essay on "Shakespeare in Bucks," 
may have been frequented by the originals of Quince 
the Carpenter and Nick Bottom, and the two who 
danced the Bergomask.^ The Grendon tradition, 
arising we know not whence, makes the poet say that 
there were " only two people worth talking to in the 
place," and that these were the breeches-maker and 
the tinker ; the suggestion is that they were no other 

•^ Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 3, 94-6. 

^ Midsummer Night's Dream, ii, i, 249. Camden, ^l.s., p. 395, speak- 
ing of the vale of Aylesbury, says : " It is all naked and bare of woods, 
unlesse it be on the West side, where among others is Bernewood whose 
Forresters surnamed de Borstall were famous in former times. About 
this forrest the yeere after Christ's nativity 914, the Danes furiously 
raged: and then happily it was, that the ancient Burgh was destroied, 
whose antiquity Romane coined peeces of mony there found doe 
testifie ; which afterwards became the roiall house of King Edward the 
Confessor. But now it is a Country Village, and in stead of Buri-Hill, 
they call it short, Brill." Brill is four or five miles south of Grendon. 
Bicester, written by Camden " Burcester," has been supposed to derive 
its name (Burenceaster, or Bernaceaster) from its neighbourhood to 
Bernwood Forest. Cf. with Camden's account of the bareness of the 
vale of Aylesbury, Leland's words quoted below, p. 188. 

^ Midsummer Night's Dvea^n, v. i, 360-1. 



THE CONSTABLE OF GRENDON 187 

in the flesh than Robert Starveling, the tailor, that 
played Thisbe's mother,^ and Tom Snout, who pre- 
sented a ''sweet and lovely Wall."" But then, for the 
constable, we are taken back to Much Ado about 
Nothing. Might not Dogberry be the man, it is asked, 
with his "two gowns, and everything handsome about 
him"?^ Dogberry is somewhat too majestical to be 
copied from a rustic watchman ; and Goodman Verges 
is too old, and "speaks a little off the matter."* 
There is a wise officer in Measure for Measure who 
comes nearer to the point : — 

"If it please your honour, I am the poor duke's constable, 
and my name is Elbow : I do lean upon justice, sir, 
and do bring in here before your good honour two 
notorious benefactors."^ 

On the whole, however, if there was such an officer at 
Grendon to whom the poet intended to refer, "the 
most desartless man to be constable " would be either 
Hugh Otecake or George Seacole, to whom writing 
and reading came by nature.^ George Seacole was 
also a well-favoured man by gift of fortune. " You are 
thought here," says Master Dogberry, "to be the 
most senseless and fit man for the constable of the 
watch ; therefore bear you the lantern." We know 
nothing for certain about the matter. It is just possible 
that a part of this kind may have got into the farces 
constructed out of the episode of Pyramus and Thisbe. 
These popular versions would naturally be filled with 
"gag." The droll, composed on this theme and 
called The Merry Conceited Humours of Bottom the 

^Id.,i,2, 62-3. 

2 Id., V. I, 157, " I, one Snout by name, present a wall." 

'^ Much Ado about Nothing, v. 2, 88-9. ^ Id., iii. 5, lo-ii. 

^ Measure for Measure, ii. i, 47-50. 

^ Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 3. Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, i. 
189, remarks that unless the Grendon constable " had attained an in- 
credible age in the year 1642, he would have been too young for the 
prototype." 



i88 LANDMARKS ON STRATFORD ROAD 

Weaver, was described by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps in 
the Shakespeare Society's Papers; it seems to have 
been a popular farce acted by small companies at 
Bartlemy Fair and country revels and gatherings.-^ 

Aylesbury was some nine miles further on. Leland, 
on his way from Oxford into Warwickshire, came by 
way of Thame to Aylesbury, and so on to Bicester, 
Banbury, and Warwick. On his way back to London, 
he writes : "Or ever I passed into Aylesbury, I rode 
over a little bridge of stone called Woman's Bridge 
. . . and from this bridge to the town is a stone cause- 
way. . . . The town's self of Aylesbury standeth on 
a hill in respect of all the ground thereabout, a 
three-miles flat north from Chiltern Hills. The town 
is neetly well builded with timber, and in it is a 
celebrate market." ^ It may be noticed that a Dane 
called Jacobsen, travelling in this country about 1677, 
mentions this market as showing the largest oxen in 
England ; his travels are preserved among the manu- 
scripts in the Royal Library at Copenhagen. From 
Aylesbury it was a distance of three miles to Wen- 
dover, " a pretty thorough-fare town."^ "There is a 
caxiseway made almost through to pass betwixt Ayles- 
bury and it, else the way in wet time as in a low stiff 
clay were tedious and ill to pass." Wendover, said 
Leland, stood partly on the cliffs of the Chilterns and 
partly in the roots of the hills. " Look as the country 
of the Vale of Aylesbury for the most part is clean 
barren of wood, and is champaign ; so is all the 
Chiltern well-wooded, and full of enclosures." After 

^ Shakespeare Society's Papers, 1844-9, ^^* I3°> "ote ; (^ Fe-w Observa- 
tions on the Composition of '■^ the Midsummer Night's Dream") 

^ Leland, Itinerary, ed. Hearne, 1710-12, iv. 100. 

^ Leland, ihid., loi. Five miles is nearer the mark, according" to our 
modern reckoning. Leland's mile corresponds to about a mile and a half 
in the present day. Thus, in counting up distances from Warwick, he 
reckons the five miles to Barford Bridge as three, and the eighteen 
miles to Banbury as twelve. 



FROM AYLESBURY TO UXBRIDGE 189 

another stage of three ^ miles the travellers reached 
Great Missenden, a thoroughfare village not yet digni- 
fied with a market; and here was a ''pretty" brick 
chapel ; and there was in Leland's time a Priory of 
Black Canons standing at the bottom of the hill 
among goodly grounds.^ The library of this monas- 
tery, consisting chiefly of manuscript romances of 
chivalry, was purchased in Queen Elizabeth's reign 
by Serjeant Fletewode, otherwise Fleetwood, Recorder 
of London ; it was sold by his descendant in 1774 
under the name of " Bibliotheca Monastico-Flete- 
wodiana." Little Missenden was hardly to be ranked 
as a village, consisting as it did at that time of a few 
houses on each side of the road. Amersham had 
only one street, but the buildings were larger and 
newer, with clean timber and plaster, and it was "a 
right pretty market-town on Friday."^ Uxbridge, 
again, had but one long street, with excellent timbered 
houses; "the Church," we are told, "is almost a 
mile out of the town, in the very highway to London " ; 
and this showed that it was not a very ancient town.* 
It was not a parish of itself, but was a member of 
Great Hillingdon, governed at that time by bailiffs 
and constables "and two tything-men, who were also 
called headboroughs." There was a market, however, 
of a considerable antiquity ; and the townsmen had 

^ i.e. five (see above). 

^ Tanner, Notitia Monastica, 1787, Buckinghamshire, No. xvi. Dug- 
dale, Monasticon, ed. Caley, Ellis, and Bandinel, 1830, vi. 547. Camden, 
U.S., p. 394: "A religious house that acknowledged the D'Oilies their 
founders and certaine Gentlemen surnamed De Missenden their especiall 
benefactours upon a vow for escaping a ship-wracke." 

^ Leland, ibid. He gives the name its old form, Hagmondesham, or 
Homersham. In Johnson's Life of Waller, we find the form Agmondes- 
ham. Camden, u.s., p. 394, has "And then in the Vale Aniershavi, in 
the Saxon tongue Agmundesham, which vaunteth it selfe not for faire 
buildings, nor multitude of inhabitants, but for their late Lord Francis 
Russell Earle of Bedford, who being the expresse paterne of true 
piety and noblenesse lived most deerely beloved of all good men. " 

* Leland, ibid., 102. 



igo LANDMARKS IN LONDON 

subscribed to build a chapel-of-ease as early as the 
reign of Henry VL An account of the place will be 
found in Norden's Speculum BritannicE, first published 
in 1593.' 

Ill 

UXBRIDGE TO TYBURN — ST. GILES' 

After crossing the long bridges over the Colne and 
passing through Uxbridge, the road went on to 
SouthaU and the thoroughfare at Acton. After pass- 
ing the Gravel Pits at Kensington, the traveller rode 
under the great brick wall of Hyde Park, crossing the 
Westbourne Brook, ''the original source of the Ser- 
pentine," 2 and so to the place of execution at Tyburn, 
and the banqueting-house near the Marylebone Con- 
duits. Mr. Loftie's History of London contains a full 
account of the changes by which the odious name of 
Tyburn was shifted from the village of Marylebone to 
the triangular piece of waste land near the Marble 
Arch. 2 It may be to the shape of the ground that 
Shakespeare refers in a passage of Love's Labour's 
Lost : — 

" Thou mak'st the trlumviry, the corner-cap of society, 
The shape of Love's Tyburn that hangs up simplicity." ^ 

That a gallows was at one time left standing there is 
shown by Aubrey's anecdote about Sir Miles Fleetwood 
of Missenden, who was Recorder of London about 
the accession of James I. '' He was a very severe 
hanger of highwaymen, so that the fraternity were 
resolved to make an example of him : which they 

^ Spec, Brit, ed. of 1723, p. 41 : "They have a Chappell of Ease 
buylt by Ro. Oliuer, Thomas Mandin, lolni Pahiier and lohn Barforde 
of the same towne. In the sixth and twentith yeere of Henry the sixt." 
Sub Vxbridge or Woxbridg^e. 

^ W. J. Loftie, History of London, 1883-4; "• 236. 

^ Id., ii. 217-20. * Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 3, 53-4. 



TYBURN AND MARYLEBONE CONDUITS 191 

executed in this manner : They lay in wait for him 
not far from Tyburn, as he was to come from his 
house at (Missenden) in Bucks ; had a halter in readi- 
ness, brought him under the gallows, fastened the 
rope about his neck, his hands tied behind him (and 
servants bound), and then left him to the mercy of his 
horse, which he called Ball. So he cried, ' Ho, Ball ! 
Ho ! Ball ! ' and it pleased God that his horse stood 
still, till somebody came along, which was half a 
quarter of an hour or more ; He ordered that this 
horse should be kept as long as he would live, and it 
was so, — he lived till 1646."^ Mr. Loftie describes 
the annual festival at which the conduits were in- 
spected, and quotes Strype's account of the merry- 
making of the i8th of September, 1562, when the 
Lord Mayor and Aldermen visited the Conduit-heads : 
they hunted a hare before dinner, and after dinner a 
fox: '* there was great cry for a mile, and at length 
the hounds killed him at the end of St. Giles's, with 
great hollowing and blowing of horns at his death." ^ 
Leland counts his stage from Acton to " Maryburne 
Brooke and Parke" as four miles. "This brook," he 
writes, "runneth by the Park-wall of St. James"; ^ 
he is here referring to the Tyburn Stream, which in 
his time ran across the high-road, passing from Mary- 
lebone Lane to a village now included in Mayfair. 
It is now carried beneath the Green Park and under 
the front portion of Buckingham Palace. 

At Tyburn Tree there was a parting of the ways. 
For Westminster and Charing Cross one turned down 
by the fields and lanes. We have letters written in the 
next generation which must be applicable to those 
earlier times. Going through the park was "as pretty 
a piece of road as ever a crow flew over." From the lane 
outside the wall there was "a far distant prospect of 

' Aubrey, i/.s., i. 253. ^ Loftie, u.s., ii. 220. 

'^ Leland, 71. s., iv. 102. 



192 LANDMARKS IN LONDON 

hills and dales," meadows full of cattle, 'Mittle wilder- 
nesses of blackbirds and nightingales." Gerard made 
notes about several rare plants which he found not far 
from the roadside, of which a few examples may be 
mentioned. The Great Burnet, for example, was found 
by Gerard " upon the side of a cawsey " leading out of 
the road between Paddington and Lisson Green. ^ He 
found plenty of Pig-nuts near the Marylebone Conduit- 
heads.^ His editor also talks of seeing the Bugloss 
*'upon the drie ditch bankes about Pickadilla."^ The 
wild Clary grew in the fields of Holborn, " neere unto 
Graies Inne, in the high way by the end of a bricke 
wall " ; the purple Clary grew in his own garden.* 
Gerard found Rue-leaved Whitlow-grass "up on the 
bricke wall in Chauncerie lane, belonging to the Earle 
of Southampton, in the suburbes of London, and 
sundrie other places."^ 

The road ran through the fields to Lord Lisle's at 
St. Giles', where the old Leper Hospital had formerly 
stood ; and here generations of poor prisoners had 
rested on their way to Tyburn, and had been allowed 
great draughts of ale from St. Giles' Bowl, "thereof to 
drink at their pleasure, as to be their last refreshing in 
this life."^ The custom survived in a squalid gin- 
drinking way until the place of execution was altered. 
"At the Dragon I take my gill," was the song of the 
dismal highwayman ; or, if he pleased, he might take 
his parting-glass at the door of the "Bow" or the 
" Angel." ^ St. Giles in the Fields was a country 
village when Shakespeare came to town. The map 
attributed to Ralph Aggas shows an open road as far 

^ Gerard, Herhall, 1597, lih. ii. cap. 403, p. 889. 
^ Id., lib. ii, cap. 415, p. 906. 

^ Id., ed, T. Johnson, 1633, lih. ii. cap. 283, p. 799. 
^ Id., 1597, lih. ii. cap. 255, p. 628. ^ Id., lih. ii. cap. 186, p. 500. 

® Stow, Survey of London, 1598, ed. H. Morley, p. 399. 
'' See W. H. Ainsworth's lyric in Jack Sheppard, epoch i. chap, v., 
"Where Saint Giles's church stands, once a lazar-house stood." 



ST. GILES' AND GRAY'S INN 193 

as Gray's Inn, with a few buildings about Holborn 
Bars, and down as far as the Gateway in Gray's Inn 
Lane. But notwithstanding the proclamations against 
building near the City, the thin lines of houses were 
always creeping westwards on both sides of the way. 
" On the high street," says the Smvey in the edition of 
1618, '* have ye many fair houses builded, and lodgings 
for Gentlemen, Innes for Travellers, and such like, up 
almost (for it lacketh but little) to St. Giles in the 
Fields." 1 



IV 

gray's inn — THE REVELS OF 1 594 AND ' ' THE COMEDY OF ERRORS " 
— " TWELFTH NIGHT " AT THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, 160I-2 

The Gray's Inn Fields extended over a wide tract 
from the Inn Gateway to Kentish Town and Islington. 
Henry, Lord Berkeley, who died as late as 1613, used 
when young to hunt in Gray's Inn Fields ''and in all 
those parts towards Islington and Heygate " while 
living with his mother at Kentish Town and at the 
family mansion in Shoe Lane ; and his biographer 
states that he was always accompanied by a crowd of 
Inns-of-Court men, as well as by the hundred and fifty 
liveried retainers, "that daily then attended him in 
their Tawny coates."^ 
•^ Mr. Douthwaite, in his learned history of Gray's 
Inn, has given an interesting account of the Masques 
for which the Society was famous.^ These Masques, 
or " disguisings," were usually performed for the 

1 Stow, U.S., ed. 1618, p, 823. 

" John Smyth, The Lives of the Berkeleys . . . from 1066 to 1618, ed. 
Sir John Maclean, f.s.a. , 1883, ii. 281-2. 

^ W. R. Douthwaite, Gray's Inn, its History and Associations, 1886, 
chap. X. pp. 222-46. 
O 



194 LANDMARKS IN LONDON 

amusement of visitors during the period allotted for 
Revels. The old dictionaries define Revels and 
revelling as being noisy pastimes, or (as we might 
say) old-fashioned Christmas sports, such as dancing, 
dice-playing, round games, '* used in Princes' Courts, 
noblemen's houses, or Inns of Court, and commonly 
performed at night. 'V^|i We are told that at "Grand 
Christmas," as celebrated in the Inner Temple, the 
Master of the Game summoned his huntsman into the 
Hall, who came with a purse-net, and a cat and a fox, 
bound to a staff; "and with them nine or ten Couple 
of Hounds, with the blowing of Hunting-Hornes. And 
the Fox and Cat are by the Hounds set upon, and 
killed beneath the Fire."^ Mr. Douthwaite describes 
the last occasion on which the Solemn Revels took 
place at the Inner Temple Hall.^ This was the feast 
held on the 2nd of February, 1733-4, to celebrate the 
promotion of Mr. Talbot to the Woolsack. After 
dinner, we are told, every member of a mess was 
supplied with a flask of claret, besides the usual 
allowance of port and sack: "the master of the 
revels took the Lord Chancellor by the right hand, 
who with his left took Mr. Justice Page, and, the 
other Serjeants and benchers being joined together, 
all danced about the coal fire three times, according 
to the old ceremony (or rather round the fire-place, for 
no fire nor embers were in it), while the ancient song, 
accompanied with music, was sung by one Tony Aston, 
dressed as a barrister." "Dancing to song," said 
Bacon, "is a thing of great state and pleasure"; 

^ Minsheu, Dicctor in Linguas, 1617, gives the definition " Revels 
seemeth to be derived from the French word Reveiller. ... It signifieth 
with us sports of dancing, masking, comedies, tragedies, and such like 
used in the King's house, the houses of Court, or of other great person- 
ages. The reason whereof is, because they are most used by night, 
when otherwise men commonly sleepe and be at rest." 

" Dug-dale, Origines Juridiciales, 1666, cap. 57, p. 154. 

■* Douthwaite, u.s., p. 244-6. 



REVELS AT GRAY'S INN 195 

but he added in the same essay that "dancing in 
song " was a mean and vulgar thing ; whereas " acting 
in song, especially in dialogues," seemed to him to 
have "an extreme good grace." ^ Bacon, it will be 
remembered, was often engaged in managing the 
Revels at Gray's Inn ; his kindness in matters of this 
" lighter and less serious kind " is fully acknowledged 
in the dedication to the Masque of Flowers, first re- 
presented in 1613-14, "by the gentlemen of Gray's 
Inn," at the Banqueting House at Whitehall, and 
reproduced in our own time at Gray's Inn and the 
Middle Temple on the occasion of Queen Victoria's 
Jubilee.'^ 

Besides the "Solemn Revels "above-mentioned, there 
were certain " Post Revels," performed by the " better 
sort" of young Templars "with Galliards, Corrantoes, 
and other dances ; or else with stage plays"; " but of 
late years," said Dugdale, "these Post Revells have 
been dis-used, both here and in the other Innes of 
Court, "=^ 
-y.. Mr. Douthwaite mentions the representation of a 
comedy at Gray's Inn on the i6th of January, 1587-8, 
at which Lord Burghley and other dignitaries were 
present.'^ He shows also that on the 28th of February 
following eight members of the Society were engaged 
in producing a tragedy on the " Misfortunes of Arthur," 
to be represented before the Queen at Greenwich.^ 
Thomas Hughes was the author, and it is said that 
Bacon, who was then a reader, took part in devising 
the dumb shows. Mr. Spedding has shown in his 
Biography that Bacon must also have been the author 
of some of the speeches of the " Prince of Purpoole," 

^ Bacon, Essay xxxvii., "Of Masques and Triumphs." (Works, ed. 
Spedding, Ellis, and Heath, 1858, vi. 467). 
^ See quotations in Douthwaite, u.s., p. 223. 
■^ Dugdale, u.s., cap. 61, "The Middle Temple," p. 205. 
■* Douthwaite, u.s., p. 225. ^ Id., pp. 226-7. 



196 LANDMARKS IN LONDON 

prepared for the Revels of 1594.^ As to the play, we 
may observe that, though King Arthur was several 
times shown on the stage, the Gray's Inn version may 
very possibly have suggested some of the reminiscences 
of Justice Shallow^. "When I lay at Clement's Inn — 
I was then Sir Dagonet in Arthur's show."- *'I do 
remember him," says Sir John, "at Clement's Inn 
like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring. "^ 
The Revels of 1594 are described in a rare book called 
Gesta Grayorum ; or, the History of Henry, Prince of 
Purpoole,^ from which extracts have been made by 
Mr. Spedding and Mr. Douthwaite.^ The "Prince" 
was the lord of misrule at Gray's Inn, his duties 
answering to those of the Constable Marshal at the 
Temple, and the Prince de la Grange at Lincoln's Inn. 
The volume in question was not published till 1688, 
but it contains a contemporary account of the perform- 
ance of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors. "Besides 
the daily Revels and suchlike Sports, which were 
usual, there was intended divers Grand nights for the 
Entertainment of Strangers." What the crowd would 
be like we may judge by a story in Webster and Dek- 
ker's Westiaard Ho! "This last Christmas a citizen 
and his wife, as it might be one of you, were invited to 

^ spedding;, Letters and Life of Francis Baco7i, 1861, i. 342-3. " That 
the speeches of the six councillors were written by him, and by him 
alone, no one who is at all familiar with his style either of thoug-ht or 
expression will for a moment doubt." 

^ 2 Henry IV., iii. 2, 299-300. The reference to "Arthur's show," 
however, has a distinct and recognised origin which has nothing to do 
with stage-plays. ^ Ibid., 331-3. 

■* Printed by Nichols in Progresses of Queen Elizabeth (ed. 1823), iii. 262. 
The " prince's " full style is " The High and Mighty Prince Henry, Prince 
of Purpoole, Arch Duke of Stapulia and Bernardia, Duke of High and 
Nether Holborn, Marquis of St. Giles and Tottenham, Count Palatine of 
Bloomsbury and Clerkenwell, Great Lord of the Cantons of Islington, 
Kentish Town, Paddington, and Knights-Bridge, Knight of the Most 
Heroical Order of the Helmet, and Sovereign of the same : who reigned 
and died A.D. 1594. " 

^ Spedding, u.s., pp. 332-41 ; Douthwaite, u.s., pp. 227-30. 



REVELS OF 1594 197 

the Revels one night at one of the Inns-o'-court : the 
husband, having business, trusts his wife thither to 
take up a room for him before."^ This looks as if 
there were reserved seats in stages or galleries, if not 
boxes, like the ''rooms" in the theatre. We are told 
of the torchmen at the gate, and the "whifflers" who 
kept the road clear, and of the clamorous crowd ''able 
to drown the throats of a shoal of fishwives." On 
December 28th, the second of the Grand Nights, the 
actors came over from Shoreditch to entertain the 
guests with a play ; but the beholders were so nu- 
merous that there was no space for the performers. 
The guests from the Temple retired in displeasure, 
and the "throngs and tumults," as we are told, "did 
somewhat cease, although so much of them continued, 
as was able to disorder and confound any good Inven- 
tions whatsoever." We can imagine the dismay of the 
actors at all this noise. The scene recalls the words : 
"By my troth, your town is troubled with unruly 
boys." ^ "In regard whereof," the narration continues, 
"as also for that the sports intended were especially 
for the gracing the Templarians , it was thought good 
not to offer anything of Account, saving Dancing and 
Revelling with Gentlewomen." We now learn what 
the managers included in their idea of poor inventions 
of no account. " After such sports, a Comedy of Errors 
(like to Plautus his Menechmus) was played by the 
Players, so that night was begun and continued to the 
end, in nothing but Confusion and Errors ; whereupon 
it was ever afterwards called The Night of Errors^ ^ 
It was, in truth, a wild "Tartar limbo," ^ if we borrow 

^ Westward Ho ! (ed. Dyce, 1857) act v. sc. 4. Fleay, Biographical 
Chronicle of English Drama, 1891, ii. 269-70, ascribes "nearly all" acts 
iv. and v. to Dekker "in Dec, 1604," the rest to Webster "in the sum- 
mer of 1603. . . . Dekker's part is personally satiric." 

^ Cotnedy of Errors, iii. i, 62. 

■' Gesta Grayorum, ti.s. 

■* Comedy of Errors, iv. 2, 32. 



198 LANDMARKS IN LONDON 

the phrases of the comedy, full of sirens and wizards,^ 
enough to make a man "as mad as a buck":^ 

" This is the fair}' land : O spite of spites ! 
We talk with goblins, owls, and sprites ; 
If we obey them not, this will ensue, 
They'll suck our breath or pinch us black and blue. "^ 

Next night was held one of those burlesque Courts 
of which the lawyers were so fond ; ^ and it was 
pleaded that some sorcerer had interfered, the in- 
nuendo being evidently directed against Bacon, and 
that he had foisted in "a company of base and 
common fellows," who had made the disorder worse 
by their "play of Errors and Confusions." The 
company thus rudely described most probably in- 
cluded Shakespeare. The selection of his comedy is in 
favour of this idea ; and that he was one of the leading 
actors appears by the fact that he went with Burbage 
and Kempe to act before the Queen at Greenwich on 
the 26th and 28th of December, 1594, a few days after 
the performance at Gray's Inn. It may be assumed 
from the whole scope of the narrative that The Comedy 
of Errors was not presented as a new piece. It was 
obviously put on as a makeshift ; and there are other 
circumstances which have led the commentators to 
suppose that it was produced before 1594. The 
MencBchmi of Plautus in an English version was not 
published before the following year ; but Malone 
showed from the printer's own advertisement that the 
book had been for a long time circulating in manu- 
script. ^ The joke in the play about France "making 
war against her heir " ^ would not have been very 
appropriate after the 25th of July, 1593, when Henry 
IV. of France made his peace with the Parisians. 

^ Id., iii. 2, 47 ; iv. 4, 61. ^ Id., iii. i, 72. 

■^ Id., ii. 2, 191-4. '' Gesta Grayorum, 11. s. 

^ Malone, op. cit., ii. 322. ^ Comedy of Errors, iii. 2, 126-7. 



THE COMEDY OF ERRORS 199 

The use of the name Menaphon may show that the 
play was subsequent to the publication of Greene's 
novel of that title in 1589.^ Nell the kitchen-maid, 
again, is called Dowsabel,^ with reference apparently 
to Drayton's " Dowsabel of Arden," who wore "a frock 
of frolic green " in his pastoral of 1593 : — 

" This maiden in a morn betime, 
Went forth when May was in the prime, 

To get sweet setywall, 
The honeysuckle, the harlock, 
The lily, and the lady-smock, 

To deck her summer hall. "^ 

But here again we must remember that the poems in 
the Shepherd's Garland may have been handed about 
for some time in manuscript, and we must be content 
with the general statement that the play probably 
appeared between 1591 and the beginning of 1593. 
" On the 3rd of January following there was another 
Grand Night at Gray's Inn, at which the players again 
attended and went through their performance with 
great success.* The list of guests invited by "our 
Prince" included Lord Burghley, "foremost in aught 
that concerned the welfare of his chosen inn,"^ the 
Earl of Essex, "the Queen's great general," Lord 
Compton, Sir Robert Cecil, the young Earl of South- 
ampton, "with a great number of knights, ladies, 
and very worshipful personages : all which had con- 
venient places, and very good entertainment, to their 
good liking and contentment." The next day the 
Prince of Purpoole dined in state with the Lord Mayor 
at Crosby Place, "attended by eighty gentlemen of 
Gray's Inn and the Temple, each of them wearing a 
on his head." -x 

^ Id., V. I, 367-8 : — " That most famous warrior, 

Duke Menaphon." 
- Id., \\\ I, no. ■' Drayton, Pastorals, eclogue iv. 

■* Gesta Grayoruvi, 71. s, ^ Douthwaite, 11. s., p. 225. 



200 LANDMARKS IN LONDON 

Another allusion to revels of this kind was found in 
a letter written by a barrister named Manningham, in 
February, 1601-2.^ The writer is describing certain 
revels at the Middle Temple, and he compares Shake- 
speare's new comedy to an old Italian play called 
GV Ingannati, which had appeared as early as 1542. 
*' At our feast wee had a play called Twelve Night, or 
what you will, much like the Commedy of Errores, or 
Menechmi in Plautus, but most like and neere to that 
in Italian called Inganni. A good practise in it to 
make the steward beleeve his lady widdowe was in 
love with him, by counterfayting a letter as from his 
lady in general termes, telling him what shee liked 
best in him, and prescribing his gesture in smiling, 
his apparraile, &c., and then, when he came to practise, 
making him beleeve they tooke him to be mad." 
This entertainment took place at the Candlemas Feast 
held on February 2nd, 1601, O.S., when the Judges 
and Serjeants were entertained. Dugdale has left 
some account of this festivity. There were two such 
feasts in the year, appointed for All Saints' Day and 
the Purification of our Lady, or Candlemas Day. 
The invitations were at first confined to the members 
of the profession ; '' but of later time, divers Noblemen 
have been mixed with them, and solemnly invited 
as Guests to the Dinner, in regard they were formerly 
of the Society." When the company was assembled 
"two antient Utter-Baristers " brought basons and 
ewers of sweet water for washing their hands, "and 
two other like antient barristers with Towells.""- 

^ Printed and in facsimile in Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 82. 
^ Dugdale, u.s., cap. 61, p. 205. 



GRAY'S INN GARDENS 201 



V 

THE GARDENS OF GRAy's INN — ^JOHN GERARD'S GARDEN IN 
HOLBORN 

It appears from the records of the Society that the 
gardens of Gray's Inn were laid out under the direc- 
tion of Bacon about the year 1597. Mr. Douthwaite 
quotes an order of the 29th of April, 1600, in which 
allowance was made for money disbursed by him 
"about the Garnishing of the walkes ; " ^ and men- 
tions a summer-house upon a small hillock, "open 
on all sides, and the roof supported by slender pillars," 
which bore an inscription showing that it had been 
erected by Bacon in memory of Jeremy Bettenham, 
formerly Reader of Gray's Inn.^ The same records 
show that a considerable number of elms, with three 
walnut-trees, " and one young ash near the seat," had 
been planted as early as 1583.^ The walks after- 
wards became a place of public resort, much visited 
"by the gentry of both sexes," especially after the 
Restoration. We need here only refer to two 
passages in letters written from Venice by James 
Howell to his friend Richard Altham at Gray's Inn. 
"Did you know all," says Howell, "you would wish 
your Person here a-while ; did you know the rare 
beauty of this Virgin City, you would quickly make 
love to her, and change your Royal Exchange for the 
RialtOy and your Gray's-Inn-Walks for St. Mark' s-Place 
for a time. Farewell, dear Child of Vertue, and 
Minion of the Muses, and love still — Yours, J. H."* 
In the other letter he addresses his friend as "dear 

^ Douthwaite, it.s., p. 183. 

^ Id., pp. 184-5, quoted from London mid its Environs described, 1761, 
iii. 58. ^ Id., pp. 185-6. 

"* Howell, Epp. Ho-Elia7ice, ed. Joseph Jacobs, 1892, p. 73 (bk. i. § 1, 
letter 32, dated i July, 1621). 



202 LANDMARKS IN LONDON 

Dick," and says: ''I would I had you here with a 
wish, and you would not desire in haste to be at Gray's- 
Inn, tho' I hold your Walks to be the pleasant'st 
place about London^ and that you have there the 
choicest Society." i These letters appear to have been 
written about five years after Shakespeare's death. 

There was a garden on the other side of the street, 
which must also have been familiarly known to the 
poet. John Gerard, the botanist and author of the 
celebrated Herbal, lived in Holborn, just inside the 
City Liberties, between Chancery Lane and Staple 
Inn. We shall select a few specimens from his herb- 
garden, before going through the rose-walks and 
orchards. We take the tomato first, of which the red 
kind was already well known in London, and the 
yellow had just been introduced. "Apples of Love," 
says Gerard, "grow in Spaine, Italic, and such hot 
countries, from whence my selfe have received seedes 
for my garden, where they do increase and prosper . . . 
the apple of Love is called in Latine Pomum 
Aureum ... in English apples of Love, and 
golden apples . . . howbeit there be other golden 
apples whereof the poets do fable growing in the 
gardens of the daughters of Hesperits .'^ '^ Shake- 
speare's allusions to golden apples are confined to the 
Ovidian fable : there is Cupid, a little Hercules, 
"still climbing trees, in the Hesperides : " ^ and in a 
passage of more doubtful authorship is the picture of 
a Lady apparelled like the Spring : — 

" Before thee stands this fair Hesperides, 
With golden fruit, but dangerous to be touched ; 
For death-like dragons here affright thee hard." ^ 

Something should be said of potatoes, including in 

^ Id., p. 69 (bk. i. § I, letter 30, dated 5 June, 162 1). 
^ Gerard, op. cit., lib. ii. cap, 55, p. 275. 

^ Love's Labour s Lost, iv. 3, 340-1 : " For valour, is not Love a 
Hercules," etc. ■* Pericles, i. i, 12, 27-9. 



GERARD'S GARDEN 203 

the term the yams, or sweet-potatoes, twice mentioned 
in the plays, as well as the more familiar "Potatoes 
of Virginia," which were brought to this country by 
Sir Walter Ralegh. Of the first kind Gerard writes 
as follows : " This plant which is called of some . . . 
Skyrrits of Peru, is generally of us called Potatus or 
Potatoes. It hath long rough flexible branches trail- 
ing upon the ground, like unto Pompions; whereupon 
are set rough hairie leaves, very like unto those of the 
wilde Cucumber."^ The flower, he adds, remained 
unknown : " yet have I had in my garden divers roots 
that have florished unto the first approch of winter, & 
have growen unto a great length of branches, but 
they brought not foorth any flowers at all." Again, 
he tells us that the potatoes grow in India (by which 
he means the West Indies and South America), in 
Barbary, and in Spain: "of which I planted divers 
rootes (that I bought at the exchange in London) in 
my garden, where they flourished untill winter, at 
which time they perished and rotted." Among the 
Spaniards, Italians, and "Indians," these yams or 
batatas were valued, as being "a meane betweene 
flesh and fruit." " Of these rootes may be made con- 
serves, no less toothsome, wholesome, and daintie, 
than of the flesh of Quinces. And likewise these 
comfortable and delicate meates, called in shops 
Morselli, Placentulae, and divers other such like. 
These rootes may serve as a ground or foundation, 
whereon the cunning confectioner or Sugar baker may 
worke and frame many comfortable delicate conserves, 
and restorative sweete meates." Of the Sea-holly, 
coupled by Falstafl" with these sweetmeats, when he 
challenged the sky to rain "potatoes,"^ Gerard says 

^ Gerard, op, cit., lib. ii. cap. 334, p. 780. The skirwort, or skirret 
proper, was the water-parsnip (sm?n sisarum). See Nares' Glossary, s. v. 

^ Merry Wives of Windsor, v. 5, 20-4 : " Let the sky raui potatoes . . . 
hail kissing-comfits and snow eringoes." 



204 LANDMARKS IN LONDON 

that he had both kinds in his London garden, and 
"that the rootes condited or preserved with sugar . . . 
are exceeding good to be given unto old and aged 
people that are consumed and withered with age." ^ 

The root naturalised in this country was called Pap- 
pus, or Potato of America, or of Virginia, because it 
had not only the shape, but something of the taste 
and virtue of the better-known yam from Peru. '^It 
groweth naturally in America," says the Herbalist, 
"where it was first discovered, as reporteth C. Clusius, 
since which time I have received rootes hereof from 
Virginia, otherwise called Norembega, which growe 
and prosper in my garden, as in their own native 
countrie."^ 

Of tobacco, "the Indian pot-herb," Gerard had three 
kinds under cultivation, distinguished as the Henbane 
of Peru, the Trinidada Tobacco, and the dwarf variety.^ 
Tobacco "was first brought into Europe out of the 
prouinces of America, which is called the west Indies 
. . . but being now planted in the gardens of Europe, 
it prospereth very well.""* Gerard recommended the 
juice boiled with sugar into a syrup; but "some use 
to drinke it (as it is tearmed) for wantonnesse or rather 
custome, and cannot forbeare it, no, not in the middest 
of their dinner "; and he earnestly commends the syrup 
"above this fume or smokie medicine."^ The Yellow 
Henbane, or English tobacco, was often used instead 
of the Indian herb, and it was even imported from 
Trinidad and Virginia under the names of "Petum," 
or " Petun," and " Nicosiana," that belonged of right 
to the true tobacco. We are told that many preferred 
to use this "doubtful Henbane/' and that it produced 
the desired effects: "which any other herbe of hot 
temperature will do," says Gerard, "as rosemarie, 

^ Gerard, op. cit.. Jib. ii. cap. 469, p. 1,000. 

^ Id., lib. ii. cap. 335, p. 781. ■' Id., lib. ii. cap. 63, p. 286. 

■* Ibid., pp. 2S7-8. ' Id., lib. ii. cap. 62, pp. 284-5, 



GERARD'S TOBACCO-PLANTS 205 

time, winter sauorie, sweet marierome, and such like."^ 
He might have included colt's-foot, though it was con- 
sidered to be of a colder temperature ; this was used at 
Bartholomew Fair to adulterate the rank Mundungus. 
"Three-pence a pipe-full I will have made," says 
Ursula, "of all my whole half-pound of tobacco, and 
a quarter of pound of colt's-foot mixt with it too, to 
[eke] it out."- We may read in another play how the 
"rich smoke," at sixpence a pipe-full, was served in a 
smart druggist's shop. The herb is kept in a lily-pot, 
and minced on a maple-block ; there are " Winchester 
pipes," and silver tongs, and a fire from shavings of 
juniper.^ 



VI 

SHAKESPEARE A HOUSEHOLDER IN BISHOPSGATE — 
CROSBY PLACE 

We find Shakespeare, towards the end of his life, 
purchasing an old house in the Liberty of Blackfriars, 
nearly opposite the Church of St. Andrew by the 

^ Ihid., p. 285. 

^ Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, ii. i. The editors of Nares, op. cit, 
quote Poor Robin (1713) : "Since the man persuaded his master . . . 
that he should not put so much colt's-foot in his tobacco." Cf. also 
Beaumont and Fletcher, Nice Valour, iii. 2 : — 

" Our modern kick, 
Which has been mightily in use of late 
Since our young men drank colt's-foot." 
^ The Alchemist, i. i : — 

" He lets me have good tobacco, and he does not 
Sophisticate it with sack-lees or oil, 
Nor washes it in muscadel and grains. 
Nor buries it in gravel, under ground, 
Wrapp'd up in greasy leather . . . 
But keeps it in fine lily pots, that, open'd. 
Smell like conserve of roses, or French beans. 
He has his maple block, his silver tongs, 
Winchester pipes, and fire of Juniper." 



2o6 LANDMARKS IN LONDON 

Wardrobe ; but we have no evidence that he lived in 
that neighbourhood at any earlier date. His biog- 
raphers have relied on slight indications to show that 
he may have resided at one time near Shoreditch, at 
another time near the new Blackfriars Theatre, and 
afterwards near the Globe upon Bankside. There 
seems, however, to be nothing that can be treated as 
good evidence upon the matter until we come to 
Mr. Hunter's discovery that Shakespeare was a house- 
holder in St. Helen's, Bishopsgate Street, when a sub- 
sidy was assessed under an Act of Parliament in the 
year 1598.^ 

There were, however, events which called his atten- 
tion to that neighbourhood about the time of his first 
arrival in London ; and it may be that we owe to them 
the allusions to Crosby Place in St. Helen's Parish 
which Shakespeare brings into his version of the 
tragedy of Richard III. On the 8th of May, 1586, 
says Stow, Henry Ramel, or Ramelius, ''Chancellor 
of Denmark, ambassador unto the queen's majesty of 
England from Frederick the Second, the king of Den- 
mark," was received by Gilbert Lord Talbot at Black- 
wall, and conducted to Greenwich and thence to the 
Tower Wharf ; at the Tower he was received by Lord 
Cobham and other noblemen, and was escorted through 
Fenchurch Street to Crosby Place, where he was 
lodged till he had finished his embassy at the Queen's 
expense.^ 

Crosby Place house, says Stow, was built by Sir 
John Crosby under a lease for ninety-nine years from 
1466 granted to him by Alice Ashfeld,^ prioress of St. 
Helen's: "This house he built of stone and timber, 
very large and beautiful, and the highest at that time 
in London." He was one of the sheriffs and an alder- 

^ Hunter, op. cit., pp, 76-80. ^ Stow, Survey (1598), jc.s., p. 187. 

•^ Ashfed is the reading in the early editions of Stow ; it was altered 
by Strype. 



CROSBY PLACE 207 

man in 1470, and was knighted during the next year 
for helping to repel the Bastard of Faulconbridge when 
he attacked the city.^ We may remember how Queen 
Margaret complains when Warwick becomes Lord 
of Calais, and ''stern Falconbridge commands the 
narrow seas."- 

It is by a poetic licence that Richard of Gloucester 
is made to take up his abode in the house before the 
date of Sir John Crosby's death. He might be sup- 
posed to have made appointments for meetings there, 
just as he bade King Henry's pall-bearers attend him 
at Whitefriars,^ or summoned Dr. Shaw to the palace 
of Baynard's Castle ; ^ but Crosby Place seems to be 
treated as his own, and to be regarded as a place 
offering special facilities for his plots and secret under- 
takings. Here Catesby and the murderers of Clarence 
are summoned,^ and here is carried on the wooing 
of the princess, whose husband Richard had stabbed 
in his " angry mood " at Tewkesbury : — 

" That it may please you leave these sad designs 
To him that hath more cause to be a mourner, 
And presently repair to Crosby Place."*' 

Sir John, says Stow, died in the year 1475, "so 
short a time enjoyed he that his large and sumptuous 
building."^ His tomb in St. Helen's Church bears 
his figure in armour, with an alderman's cloak and 
a collar of Yorkist badges. It appeared by the picture 
of Alderman Darby, who lived in Fenchurch Street at 
the time when the tomb was set up, that the official 
costume was "a gown of scarlet on his back, and a 
hood on his head " and shoulders.® Sir John Crosby 
left five hundred marks as a gift for restoring the 
church, which was very well bestowed, "as appeareth 

^ Stow, op. cit, p. 186. See also pp. 60, 88, etc. 

^ 3 Henry VL, i. i, 238-9. ^ Richard III, , i. 2, 227. 

■* Id., iii. 5, 105. ^ Id., iii. i, 190. ^ Id., i. 2, 211-3. 

"^ Stow, op. cit., p. 1 85. ^ Id., p. 445. 



2o8 LANDMARKS IN LONDON 

by his arms, both in the stonework, roof of timber, 
and glazing. "1 His widow. Dame Anne Crosby, 
whose figure appears on her husband's tomb, let the 
house in 1476 to Richard of Gloucester, then Lord 
Protector, and afterwards King. The young King was 
for all practical purposes a State prisoner. "The 
dealing itselfe," says the historian, "made men to 
muse on the matter, though the counsell were close ; 
For by little and little all men with-drew from the 
Tower, and repaired to Croshies in Bishopgate streete, 
where the Protector kept his house in great state. ""^ 
Sir Thomas More lived at Crosby Place between the 
years 15 16 and 1523, and wrote the Utopia there after 
his embassy to Flanders.^ We learn something of his 
family life from his own introduction to the romance ; 
for he tells us that it was part of his daily business 
to talk with his wife, to chatter with the children, and 
to consider affairs with his servants.* " He's a learned 
man," says Wolsey : 

" May he continue 
Longf in his highness' favour, and do justice 
For truth's sake and his conscience ; that his bones, 
When he has run his course and sleeps in blessings, 
May have a tomb of orphans' tears wept on 'em. "^ 

It is not known how long More actually lived at 
Crosby Place before removing to Chelsea. It appears, 
however, that when he became Speaker of the House 
of Commons in 1523, he sold the lease to his dear 
friend Antonio Bonvisi, a merchant from the little 
principality of Lucca; and in 1542, Bonvisi bought 

1 Id., p. 186. 

^ Speed, Historie of Great Britaine, 3rd ed. , 1632, p. S96. 

^ Arber, in the introduction to Utopia in "English Reprints" series, 
says that the second book was written probably at Antwerp, November, 
1515, the first in London early in 1516. 

^ Utopia, U.S., p. 22 (introductory letter to Peter Giles): "For when 
I am come home, I must converse with my wife, chatte with my children, 
and talke wyth my seruauntes." ^ Henry VIII., iii. 2, 395-9. 



INHABITANTS OF CROSBY PLACE 209 

from the Crown the freehold of the mansion, with its 
*' Solars, Cellars, Gardens . . . void Places of Land" 
thereto belonging.^ We shall not follow the title 
minutely. The estate was confiscated when the mer- 
chant went home without leave, was restored by Mary, 
hired by Elizabeth. After the death of More's ''dear- 
est friend " the place belonged to another foreigner, 
German Cioll, or German Sciol, as the name is 
variously written. His wife Cecilia was one of the 
parish benefactors. "I find," says Stow, "... is. 
also in Bread every Sunday given by Mrs. Sciol." ^ 
We may mention one or two more of the famous 
persons who owned or lived in the palace. First, 
of course, is Sidney's sister, Mary Sidney, Countess 
of Pembroke, who lived here for a time when Pem- 
broke House, in Aldersgate Street, was used for another 
purpose.^ Next came William Bond, ^^ Flos Merca- 
toruni, quos terra Britanna creavtt," as we read on 
a goodly monument upon the north wall of St, Helen's 
choir. He was " Argolico Mercator lasone major," 
and the winner of a richer prize. The epitaph of 1576 
says that he was a ''Merchant Venturer, and most 
famous (in his Age) for his great Adventures both by 
Sea and Land."* 

Crosby Place was purchased some time afterwards 
by the rich Sir John Spencer, who made great repara- 
tions and improvements, and kept his mayoralty there 
after his election to the office in 1594. He also added 
a great warehouse at the back to receive East Indian 
goods, being one of the merchants interested in the 
voyage of the three ships to India and China, from 
which came the East India Company.^ We learn 

^ Stow, ed. Strype, bk. ii. p. io6. 
- Id., p. 103. On p. 106 the spelling- is Cioll. 
^ Loftie, op. cit., i. p. 293. 

■* Stow, U.S., bk. ii. p. 106. For epitaph see id., p. loi. Bond died 
30th May, 1576. ^ Stow, ed. 1603, p. 187. 

P 



2IO LANDMARKS IN LONDON 

from Stow of an entertainment given to the great 
Sully, who brought over the French King's congratula- 
tions on the accession of James L ''The eight of 
June, arrived at London, Moimsieitr de Rosny, great 
Treasurer of Fraunce : accompanied with Noblemen 
and gallant Gentlemen in great number, the same 
night they in thirty coaches, rode to the French 
Ambassadours leager, then lodged at the Barbicane 
by Redcross streete, they supped with him, and 
returned to Crosby place, now beelonging to Sir 
John Spencer in Bishops-gate streete, where the prin- 
cipal! was lodged, and the other in places neere 
adjoyning."^ Sir John died in 1609, and was laid in 
a fair goodly tomb in the south aisle of St. Helen's 
choir, "as in a Chapel by itself." His epitaph tells us 
that by his wife Alice Bromefield he had one daughter, 
Elizabeth, his sole heiress ; that she was married to 
William, Lord Compton, who erected the monument 
to his most worthy father-in-law,^ 



VII 

THE PARISH OF ST. HELEN's — DESCRIPTION IN STOW'S " SURVEY " 

The Parish of St. Helen's is part of the Ward of 
Bishopsgate Within, which also comprises St. Ethel- 
burga's, towards the gate, St. Martin's Outwich, and 
St. Peter's, crossed by Gracechurch Street. Stow's 
careful description, with his editor's notes, will show us 
what the neighbourhood was like in Shakespeare's 
time.^ At the Gate itself was a conduit, leading on 
the right hand to several large inns. He is speaking 
of the inns near Gresham College, the " Four Swans," 
the "Green Dragon," and the "Black Bull," all in 

^ Stow, Annals, continued by Howes, 1615, p. 825. 

^ Stow, Survey, ed. Strype, bk, ii. p. loi. ^ Id., bk. i. ch. 6, p. 90. 



ST. HELEN'S PARISH 211 

St. Ethelburga's ; the "Vine," the "Angel," and the 
"Wrestlers," all in the same parish, were on the 
other side of Bishopsgate Street.^ We hear of plays 
occasionally performed in the courtyard of the " Black 
Bull"; but the theatre known as the "Bull" was set 
up at the "Red Bull," in St. John's Street, Clerkenwell. 
Next came Sir Thomas Gresham's great mansion, 
almost all in St. Helen's, the parish ending near the 
Church of St. Martin's Outwich. At its west corner, 
opposite to the church, was "a fair well with two 
buckets, so fastened that the drawing up of the one let 
down the other " ; but the edition of the Survey issued 
in 1603 tells us how "of late this well is turned into a 
pump. "2 

The same volume contains a description of the 
boundaries of St. Helen's, verified by John Harvey, 
the Parish Clerk, in or about the year 161 2. -^ The house 
at the south-east corner was occupied by Thomas Child, 
who was one of the persons assessed at the minimum 
rate, in 1598, as not being worth more than i^3 in the 
world. His house abutted on a tenement occupied by 
James Austen in the Parish of St. Martin Outwich. 
Taking a line from this point to the other side of 
Bishopsgate Street, we reach the western boundary, 
which, according to the extracts already given, must 
have been close to the new pump that had replaced the 
well with its chain and buckets. The furthest house 
in this south-west angle of St. Helen's was occupied by 
Thomas Goodson. It abutted on a gate leading into a 
tenement in the Parish of St. Martin's Outwich, 
"wherein Mr. Richard Foxe, Alderman's Deputy, now 
dwelleth." This Mr. Foxe was in charge of so much 
of the ward as lay within the Gate, another Deputy 
being appointed by the Alderman for the district 

^ Id., bk. ii. p. 107. 2 /^_^ 1603, p. 188. 

^ Id., 161S, p. 331. In Strype's Stow, bk. ii. p. 105, Jo. Warner, Parish 
Clerk, verified the statement. 



212 LANDMARKS IN LONDON 

between the Gate and the Bars near Shoreditch. 
Officials of this kind are sometimes mentioned in the 
plays. The City Records inform us that there was 
a single Deputy for the Ward of Cheap, and Sir John 
Falstaff talked of "the deputy's wife of the ward."^ 
The worthy hostess again was warned by the officer 
against entertaining swaggerers, when she came before 
Mr. Tisick the Deputy (and Mr. Dumbe the Minister 
was standing by): "'Neighbour Quickly,' says he, 
'receive those that are civil, for,' said he, 'you are in 
an ill name.' "^ 

From Thomas Child's house the boundary ran up in 
a zigzag line to the opening of that winding passage 
which connects Great St. Helen's and St. Mary Axe. 
The Parish, said John Harvey, takes in Great St. 
Helen's Close, wherein is the Parish Church, "with a 
Thorough fare to the back Gate leading into St. Mary 
at the Axe ; and the utmost House belonging to the 
said Parish, is next adjoining to the said Gate towards 
the South, and openeth into the Street there, com- 
monly called St. Mary at Axe." ^ Stow has a still more 
detailed account. There is a Court, he says, with a 
winding lane, coming out against the west end of St. 
Andrew Undershaft's Church : " In this Court standeth 
the fair Church of St. Helen, sometime a priory of 
black nuns, and in the same a parish church of St. 
Helen." 4 The Priory had been founded before the 
reign of Henry III. by William Basing, Dean of St. 
Paul's. On its dissolution the partition between the 
nuns' church and the parish church was taken down, 
so that the parishioners had the whole; it "is a fair 
parish church," says the Annalist, "but wanteth such 
a steeple as Sir Thomas Gresham promised to have 
built " to make up for the great space filled by his 
"painted Alderman's tomb." 

^ I Henry IV., iii. 3, 130. ^ 2 Henry IV., ii. 4, 90-104. 

^ Stow, 1618, p. 331. ■* Stow, 1603, p. 1S5. 



BOUNDARIES OF ST. HELEN'S 213 

Passing up on the eastern side, the boundary took 
in Little St. Helen's Close, formerly belonging to the 
same Priory, where at the time of the survey stood 
the old Leathersellers' Hall formed out of the nuns' 
refectory, with various small tenements and six 
"alms-rooms," or houses for the poor, maintained at 
the charges of the Company.^ The furthest house 
within the parish at the north-east angle belonged to 
Mr. Edward Higges the sadler, and abutted on the 
Parsonage House of St. Ethelburga's. The line now 
proceeds westwards by St. Ethelburga's Church, cross- 
ing Bishopsgate Street nearly opposite to the old 
entrance of the ''Green Dragon," and turning so as 
to leave out the " Black Bull." The furthest house at 
the north-west corner was occupied by Nathaniel 
Wright, and it "abutteth," says Harvey, "upon the 
Messuage or Tenement Inne, called the Blacke Bull 
in the . . . Parish of St. Ethelburge."" A few other 
parishioners are mentioned by the old Parish Clerk : 
we may notice the minister, the Rev. Richard Ball, 
the churchwardens, Mr. William Robinson and 
Richard Westney, Thomas Edwards and Abraham 
Gramer, the sidesmen, and Richard Atkinson, one of 
the seven scavengers of the ward, who found the un- 
fortunate infant "Job Cinere-Extractus" in the Crosby- 
Place ashpit, and brought him into the light on his 
wheelbarrow. 

We shall now deal with the assessment of 1598.^ 
The Parliament of the thirty-ninth and fortieth years 
of Elizabeth was dissolved on the 9th of February, 
having first granted as supplies for the defence of the 
realm "three Subsidies of d^s. in the pound for lands, 
and 2S. 8d. in the pound for goods," and six Fifteens. 
The Fifteens were taxes upon personalty, levied after 
an accustomed rate, which, as far as the Bishopsgate 

^ Stow, ed. Strype, bk. ii. p. 107. 

^ Id., 1618, p. 331. ^ See p. 206, note i. 



214 LANDMARKS IN LONDON 

people were concerned, were of a very unimportant 
amount. Stow tells us that in his time the ward was 
only ''taxed to the Fifteen" at ;^i3 in the whole. ^ 
The Subsidy was a very different matter. It was 
levied on all kinds of property within the realm or 
without, the case of aliens and strangers being met by 
charging them at a double rate, or by the imposition 
of a poll-tax, if they had no property within the realm. 
It should be observed, however, that the tax was 
charged either on lands or on goods, at the discretion 
of the Commissioners, but not on both. Persons who 
had not property to the value of £^ altogether were 
exempt ; and persons taxed in their usual place of 
residence received certificates exempting them from 
being charged elsewhere. The clergy taxed them- 
selves in Convocation. 

As regards laymen, subject to what has been said 
above, the following rules applied. Land was taken 
as including fees of ofBce, annuities, pensions, and 
other yearly profits of a fixed kind. In the instance 
with which we are now to deal, Shakespeare did not 
claim to possess any land or fixed yearly profits, and 
we shall therefore consider more closely the principles 
on which personalty was assessed. Everyone, as 
we have shown, was to pay on his property, if from 
all sources together he was worth £^. The taxable 
amount was made up as follows : the list included 
coin, and what might be valued in coin, as plate, 
corn and grain, stock of merchandise, household stuff, 
and movable goods, "and all such sums of money as 
shall be owing whereof he trusts in his conscience 

^ Stow, 1603, p. 188. On p. 208 of his reprint Professor Morley 
notes: "The tax of a fifteenth of all movables was first granted to 
Henry III. in February, 1225, by the archbishops, bishops, abbots, 
priors, earls, barons, knights, freeholders, and all persons of the 
realm, on condition of a confirmation of Charters. The Fifteenth had 
become under Elizabeth a recognised standard of taxation for the service 
of the country." 



ASSESSMENT OF ST. HELEN'S PARISH 215 

surely to be paid " ; the deductions included reason- 
able apparel for the person assessed and his wife and 
children, other than jewels, gold, silver, stone, and 
pearl, and he might also deduct from the capital 
account all sums that he lawfully owed, ''and in his 
conscience intended truly to pay." The Commis- 
sioners had stringent powers for compelling payment ; 
but the person charged, if dissatisfied, might have an 
appeal or second inquiry, at which he was examined 
upon oath. 

The first of the three Subsidies granted by Parlia- 
ment was to be paid at the beginning of October, 
1598. The Commissioners for the City included the 
Lord Mayor, Sir Richard Saltonstall, and three of his 
predecessors in office — Sir John Hart, Sir Henry 
Billingsley, and Sir John Spencer. The Commis- 
sioners appointed various deputies, or petty col- 
lectors, the persons selected for Bishopsgate Ward 
being Ferdinando Clutterbuck, draper, and Thomas 
Symons, skinner. The deputies made their final 
report on the ist of October, their certificates for St. 
Helen's and the other parishes in the ward being 
appended to an indenture of that date made between 
themselves and the Commissioners. The mode of 
proceeding is shown by the Act that authorised the 
Subsidy. The Commissioners in the first place issued 
a precept to the most substantial householders and 
inhabitants to meet them at some convenient spot. 
This in the case before us would probably be Crosby 
Place, since the larger house may have been occupied 
by the widowed Lady Gresham, and the Leather- 
sellers' Hall was very much out of the way. We 
know the names of several persons who must have 
been summoned to the meeting, and who doubtless 
made out a preliminary list after hearing the Com- 
missioners' charge. Sir John Spencer would be 
there, as a matter of course ; and it was known that 



2i6 LANDMARKS IN LONDON 

he would pay on merchandise, in lieu of land, £/\.o on 
a total value of i^300, according to the statutory rate. 
Lady Gresham was assessed in another district. Mr. 
William Reade chose to be charged on his lands, the 
value ;^i5o, the rate £30, at four shillings in the 
pound. Mr. John Allsoppe owned lands to one-third 
of that value, and was charged accordingly. Mr. John 
Robinson the elder was one of the most important 
parishioners. He and his son of the same name both 
chose to be assessed on personalty. Mr. Robinson's 
tomb is in St. Helen's Church, and the language of 
its inscription is worth considering in relation to some 
of the discussions about the epitaphs in Stratford 
Church. 1 The monument is described as being "be- 
neath the body of the Church in the North Wall." 
Within it, we are told, lie the earthly parts of John 
Robinson, " Merchant of the Staple in England, free 
of the Merchant Taylors, and sometime Alderman of 
London," and of Christian his wife. She died in 
1592, her husband following her in February, 1599. 
''Both much beloved in their Lives, and more 
lamented at their Deaths ; especially by the poor, to 
whom their good Deeds (being alive) begot many 
Prayers, now (being dead) many Tears. The Glass 
of his Life held Seventy Years, and then ran out. 
To live long, and happy, is an Honour ; but to die 
happy, a greater Glory. But these aspired to both. 
Heaven (no doubt) hath their Souls, and this House 
of Stone their Bodies, where they sleep in Peace, till 
the summons of a glorious Resurrection wakens 
them." 

The duty of the Commissioners was to acquaint the 
meeting with the object and provisions of the Act, and 
to direct the persons there present to prepare a certifi- 
cate of all the assessments that ought to be made in 
the locality, after making the best inquiry in their 

^ Stow, ed. Strype, bk. ii. p. loi. 



ASSESSMENT OF ST. HELEN'S, 1598 217 

power ; and the meeting was then adjourned to a future 
day, when the certificate was to be produced. The 
Committee, as we may call them, duly prepared and 
presented their list at the adjourned meeting. It con- 
tained forty names of householders, besides aliens and 
strangers. There were seven appeals by residents, 
and, as might perhaps have been expected, almost all 
the foreigners disputed the assessment. 

We will take the foreigners first. Mr. Leven Vander- 
stylt made no objection ; it is probable that he was 
placed on the committee to give information about the 
Flemings and Dutchmen. He pays the double rate on 
£^0, with eightpence for his wife, and a similar poll- 
tax for his servants, '' Esay Mislonde, Matthew Stilton, 
and Barbery Capon." Dr. Cullymore, from Ireland, 
paid on £$ after some dispute. Sherrett Bawkes, 10s. 
8d. on 40^-., and Joyce his wife, and Agnes his servant, 
per poll, i6d. together. Laurence Bassel's was the 
most singular case. He swore that he was not worth 
;^5 ; and his son Peter, and three servants, "Peter 
Greade, Davye Fayrecook, and Frauncis Dynne," all 
swore that they could not pay the eightpenny poll- 
tax. 

The Committee, it would seem, arranged the resident 
householders in classes, taking a merciful view in 
some cases, though they were forbidden to consider 
past assessments or anything except the present values. 
Out of the original forty no less than seventeen, includ- 
ing two widows, were assessed on the minimum value 
of £S' Of the richer inhabitants, besides those already 
mentioned, we notice that three were taxed on goods 
worth ^^30, and five at ^20. Mr. Robert Honywood 
disputed the Commissioners' decision, and was finally 
charged for lands worth ^^40 a year. Dr. Richard 
Taylor, Dr. Peter Turnor, and Mr. Edward Swayne, 
were each assessed for ;^io in land and official fees, 
very probably in respect of appointments at Bethlehem 



2i8 LANDMARKS IN LONDON 

Hospital. Mr. Snoade, Mr. Peole, and the younger 
Mr. Robinson were each charged on the value of ;«^io 
in goods and merchandise, and Edward Jorden paid at 
the same rate on ;^8. There were only three persons 
in the remaining class, where the whole value was 
taken at ;^5. Of these, Walter Briggen paid with- 
out dispute, and Thomas Morley and William 
Shakespeare appealed. The note on the final cer- 
tificate in Shakespeare's case was as follows: ^'Affid. 
William Shakespeare. V^- XIII'- IV'^- " ; or in other 
words, the entries being in tabular form, ''Appell- 
ant sworn : name, William Shakespeare : amount in 
goods, £^ : assessment, 13^-. 4^. at 2s. 8d. in the 
pound." 

If we refer to the Act of Parliament we shall see 
what took place. It was provided in the case of any 
person complaining of the rate before it was certified 
into the Exchequer, that two Commissioners at least 
should " examine particularly and distinctly the person 
so complaining upon his oath, and his neighbours by 
their discretions," as to his real and personal property 
of every kind ; and, after due examination of all the 
circumstances, the Commissioners were empowered 
either to diminish or increase the assessment as might 
seem just. If it were proved within a year that a false 
declaration had been made, the person offending was to 
forfeit the amount at which he had originally been 
assessed. 

We have, of course, no reason to doubt that Shake- 
speare's appeal and the Commissioners' decision were 
based upon just grounds. We must suppose that for 
the purposes of that inquiry the appellant proved his 
case. Yet what are we to say about the purchase of 
the mansion at New Place, which was completed in the 
year 1597? What, again, is to be said as to the 
return of owners of grain at Stratford, coiAfpiled in 
February, 1598, considering that Shakespeare was 



APPEAL AGAINST ASSESSMENT 219 

entered in it as holding ten quarters of corn?^ The 
price of wheat in London had fallen a few months 
previously from 104^-. to 80s. a quarter; "but then," 
says Stow, ''it arose again to the late greatest price." 
It should be observed, however, that Mr. Sturley's 
letter of the 24th of January, 1597-8,- valued a quantity 
of wheat delivered in Stratford at no more than 6^". 8^. 
a strike, which would come to only 26>r. 8d. a quarter. 
He speaks in the same letter of Shakespeare's desire 
to buy "some odd yard-land or other at Shottery or 
near about us," or to make a bargain about the Strat- 
ford tithes. We remember, too, how Richard Quiney 
the elder wrote in the October following from the ' ' Bell" 
to ask Shakespeare for a loan of £t,o without much 
doubt as to the result.^ Mr. Quiney, it may be said, 
was certainly sent to London "as a deputation," 
carrying a request that the borough might be relieved 
from the Subsidy. There were many reasons, besides 
the occurrence of two disastrous fires, which might 
induce Burghley, as Lord Treasurer, to give a favour- 
able answer to the request. There was a regular 
machinery for excusing the poorer towns from the 
payment of "Fifteens," and there was nothing un- 
reasonable in asking that the same principle might be 
applied to a subsidy. It may be that this would be 
taken into account by the London Commissioners, and 
that they would not charge Shakespeare in respect of 
his property at Stratford. But even as regards his 
possessions in London, we must consider that he was 
one of the Lord Chamberlain's company acting regu- 
larly at Blackfriars, that he had produced at least 
eighteen successful plays, and had quite lately sold 
the copyright of his popular Richard III. 

If the difficulty can be explained at all, it will prob- 

^ Facsimile in Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., i. 137. 
^ Printed in Halliwell-Phillipps, id., ii. 57-8. 
^ Printed and in facsimile, id., i. 166-7. 



220 LANDMARKS IN LONDON 

ably be found that the poet had quite recently fallen 
into debt, lawful debt which in truth and conscience 
he intended to pay. We may observe, in this connec- 
tion, that the time when he was assessed towards the 
Subsidy was also the time when his parents were deep 
in their unfortunate Chancery suit.^ 

^ For particulars of the above assessment, see Hunter, op. cit. , i. 77-80. 




SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 
HIS DEATH AND WILL 




SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS— 
HIS DEATH AND WILL 



I 



SHAKESPEARE S FAMILY — MARRIAGE OF SUSANNA SHAKESPEARE 
TO JOHN HALL — DISPOSAL OF SHAKESPEARE'S REAL PRO- 
PERTY — THE poet's LEGACY TO HIS WIFE 

SHAKESPEARE'S eldest child, Susanna, was 
baptised at Stratford Parish Church, on Trinity 
Sunday, May 26th, 1583. The twins, Hamnet and 
Judith, were born about the end of January, 1585, by 
modern reckoning. Their baptism took place on 
Tuesday, the 2nd of February, 1584-5, being the 
Festival of the Purification. It is generally supposed 
that the children were named after some of the god- 
parents, and that the twins must have had Mr. Hamnet 
Sadler and his wife Judith among their sponsors. The 
name Hamnet seems to have been accepted as equiva- 
lent to Hamlet, and Mr. Sadler himself appears under 
the latter name in Shakespeare's will. Malone points 
out that in the entry of his burial, in 1624, he is called 
" Hamlet Sadler." " The name of Hamlet," he adds, 
''occurs in several other entries in the register." He 
instances an entry as to the death of Catharina, wife 
of Hamoletus Hassal, in 1564, and another as to 

223 



224 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

Hamlet, son of Humphry Holdar, who was buried in 
1576, and points out that Mr. Hamlet Smith was one 
of the benefactors publicly commemorated at Strat- 
ford. The legend of the Prince of Denmark is shown 
to have been commonly known by Nash's reference in 
his preface to Greene's Menaphon : "English Seneca 
read by candle-light yields many good sentences, as 
Blood is a beggar^ and so forth ; and if you entreat 
him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole 
Ha77ilets, 1 should say handfuls of tragical speeches."^ 
It is possible, however, that the names of Susanna and 
Judith Shakespeare were chosen from the Apocrypha, 
to which the poet made constant references. We have 
the picture of "god Bel's priests in the old church- 
window,"- and Holofernes choosing the part of Judas 
Maccabasus ; ^ and Sir Toby is made to sing a line 
from a dull song about Joachim and his wife, "There 
dwelt a man in Babylon, lady, lady ! " ^ 

A bare entry in the register tells us that Hamnet 
died before he was twelve years old, the date of his 
burial being the nth of August, 1596. Mr. John 
Shakespeare died in 1601, his funeral taking place on 
September 8th. It is not known whether he left a 
will, but it appears that his eldest son inherited the 
dwelling-house in Henley Street. Mrs. Mary Shake- 
speare probably lived on there till her death in 1608, 
and the residence was afterwards occupied by Mr. Hart, 
who had married Joan Shakespeare. His death oc- 
curred only a few days before that of Shakespeare, 
whose will contained the following provisions in his 
sister's favour: "I give and bequeath unto my said 
sister Joan ;^20 and all my wearing apparel, to be paid 
and delivered within one year after my decease ; and I 

^ Menaphon, ed. Arber, p. g. 

^ Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 3, 143-4. 

^ Love's Labour's Lost, v. i , 1 33-4. 

^ Twelfth Night, ii. 2, 84. 



SUSANNA SHAKESPEARE'S MARRIAGE 225 

do will and devise unto her the house with the appur- 
tenances in Stratford, wherein she dwelleth, for her 
natural life, under the yearly rent of twelve-pence." 
In an earlier part of the will he had also given her a 
contingent legacy in case his daughter Judith died 
without issue during the term of three years from his 
decease. He also gave ^^5 apiece to her three sons 
William, Thomas, and Michael, then aged about 
fifteen, eleven, and eight years old respectively. The 
Christian name of the second boy was accidentally 
omitted in the will. 

Susanna Shakespeare was married to Mr. John Hall 
on the 5th of June, 1607 ; their daughter Elizabeth 
was baptised on the 21st of February following. They 
lived in a street called Old Town, not far from the 
church. Mr. Hall was a gentleman by birth, bear- 
ing the "three talbots" in his shield ; but the coat of 
arms on his tomb is not so accurately displayed as to 
show the particular family of Halls to which he be- 
longed.^ It is thought that he came from Acton, in 
Middlesex, where he owned a house which he left to 
his daughter. We first hear of him as a medical 
practitioner at Stratford, where he attained a great 
reputation ; and it appears that he was usually known 
as Doctor Hall, though he had not taken a medical 
degree. How easily a diploma might have been ob- 
tained is shown by a passage in Ward's Diary : " Mr. 
Burnet had a letter out of the Low Countries of the 
charge of a doctor's degree, which is at Leyden about 
sixteen pounds, besides feasting the professors, at 
Angers, in France, not above nine pounds, and feast- 
ing not necessary neither." ^ 

Mr. and Mrs. Hall and their daughter were the chief 
beneficiaries under Shakespeare's will. The residue 

^ Mrs. C. C. Stopes, Shakespeare's Family, 1901, p. 97, gives the coat 
as " Sable three talbots' heads erased or." 
- Ward's Diary, ed. Severn, 1839, p. 12. 

Q 



226 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

of the personalty", after certain specific legacies, was 
given in these words: "All the rest of my goods, 
chattels, leases, etc., I give, devise, and bequeath to 
my son-in-law, John Hall, gent., and my daughter 
Susanna, his wife, whom I ordain and make executors 
of my last will and testament." The superintendence 
of the trusts was given to Mr. Thomas Russell, of 
Stratford, and Mr. Francis Collins, the lawyer from 
Warwick by whom the will was prepared. The list 
of legacies included £^ to Mr. Russell, and ;^I3. 6^. 8^., 
or forty nobles, to Mr. Collins. Elizabeth Hall, 
whom the testator calls his "niece," was to have all 
the plate belonging to him at the date of the will, 
except the broad silver-gilt bowl, left to his daughter 
Judith. Mr. Thomas Combe had the poet's sword, 
and money for mourning rings was given to " Hamlett 
Sadler," William Raynoldes, Antony Nashe, John 
Nashe, and to "my fellows" John "Hemynges," 
Richard Burbage, and Henry Cundell, each receiving 
four nobles, or 26s. Sd. : and twenty shillings in gold 
to the poet's godson, William Walker. His daughter 
Judith had legacies amounting to ;^300 in all, with 
interest at ten per cent, until payment. Her marriage- 
portion accounted for a third part of the amount. 
Fifty pounds was given on condition that she gave up 
all her interest in the Rowington copyhold. The re- 
maining payment of ^^150 was to be held in suspense 
for a term of three years ; if she survived that period, 
she had it settled on her and her children, unless and 
until her husband should settle land of a correspond- 
ing value ; if she died without issue during that period, 
the money was to be given to Elizabeth Hall and Joan 
Hart and her children in the shares and under the 
provisions mentioned in the will. 

The real estate consisted of the residence in Henley 
Street and the inn adjoining, the mansion and grounds 
at New Place, with the copyhold cottage, the "four 



HIS LEGACIES TO THE HALLS 227 

and a half yard-lands " in the open fields of Stratford, 
Bishopton, and Welcorabe, and the house near the 
King's Wardrobe at Blackfriars, then in the occupa- 
tion of John Robinson. Nothing was said about Mrs. 
Anne Shakespeare's right to dower, or her right to 
keep the copyhold during her life ; but subject to her 
rights, and subject to the devise in favour of Joan 
Hart, all this real estate was settled upon Mrs. Hall 
for her life, with an entail in favour of her sons, down 
to the seventh, which never took effect: "and for 
default of such issue," the will proceeds, "the said 
premises to be and remain to my said niece Hall, and 
the heirs males of her body lawfully issuing." This 
entail was afterwards barred, and a new settlement 
executed ; but as the will stood, Judith had the next 
place in the entail, with a final gift to the testator's 
heirs. 

The gift to Mrs. Shakespeare was inserted as an 
interlineation, as if it were an afterthought. "I give 
unto my wife my second best bed, with the furniture." 
The omission to notice his wife in any other way need 
not be attributed to any want of respect or affection on 
the testator's part. It has been pointed out that the 
gifts of mourning-rings to his three "fellows" were 
also interlined, and that he certainly intended no mark 
of disrespect as far as they were concerned. The true 
explanation is probably that which was suggested by 
Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps. He speaks of the possibility 
of Mrs. Shakespeare having been afflicted with some 
"chronic infirmity of a nature that precluded all hope 
of recovery." He proceeds: "In such a case, to 
relieve her from household anxieties and select a 
comfortable apartment at New Place, where she would 
be under the care of an affectionate daughter and an 
experienced physician, would have been the wisest and 
kindest measure that could have been adopted." 

^ Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, i. 261. 



228 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

If Mrs. Shakespeare was incompetent to manage her 
own affairs, there would be no formal assignment of 
dower, or claim to a widow's estate, in the copyhold ; 
and the legacy itself would in such case be no mere 
formality, but rather a gift of some importance to one 
whose wealth consisted of "the bed and the cup and 
the fire."^ Mrs. Hall placed a strange inscription over 
her mother's grave a few years afterwards. "Here 
lieth interred the body of Anne, wife of William Shake- 
speare, who departed this life the 6th day of August, 
1623, being of the age of 67 years." The inscription 
proceeds with six lines of Latin verse, to the effect 
that the spirit as well as the body was held in the 
sepulchre. " Ubera tu, mater," it commences: "A 
mother's bosom thou gavest, and milk, and life ; for 
such bounty, alas ! can I only render stones ! Rather 
would I pray the good angel to roll away the stone 
from the mouth of the tomb, that thy spirit, even as 
the body of Christ, should go forth " ; and the hope is 
expressed that Christ may quickly come, so that the 
imprisoned soul may be able "to seek the stars." ^ 

^ There was no question here of the heirlooms or prdciputs, which 
were so well known in Wales, Brittany, and Flanders. In the district of 
Archenfield, south-west of Hereford, the lands were inherited by all the 
sons; but the eldest had certain customary "principals," such as the 
best table, the best bed and furniture, and so forth. This custom was 
found to be a relic of certain Welsh laws, referred to in Domesday Book. 
A similar origin was found for the custom of the Hundred of Stretford, 
on the opposite side of the Wye, where the eldest son was entitled to 
keep as "principals" the best waggon and plough, the best table or 
chair, the best bed, the best of the chests, cups, and platters, and other 
classes of chattels. There is no indication that any such custom ever 
prevailed at Stratford-upon-Avon, or in the manor, liberty, and hundred 
in which the borough was comprised. 

^ The lines, read at length, but with the original stopping, are as 
tollows : (1 vbera, tu mater, tu lac, vitamque dedisti. 

Vce mihi. pro tanto munere saxa dabo? 

Quam mallem, amoueat lapidem, bonus angelus ore 

Exeat ut, Christi corpus imago tua. 

Sed nil vota valent venias cito Christe ; resurget 

Clausa licet tumulo mater et astra petet," 



MRS. SHAKESPEARE 229 

Mr. Ward may have been much struck with this 
epitaph. His Diary contains religious meditations 
upon the Angels at the Sepulchre : in another passage 
he reflects that Heaven has verbera as well as ubera, 
and can punish as well as show mercy.^ The first 
part of the inscription is certainly in a very unusual 
form. The mother's care for her infant is treated as 
a matter of high importance, but nothing is said about 
the rest of her life. In this respect it may, perhaps, 
have been modelled upon an epitaph at Lucca, to be 
found in the Hortus Inscriptionum of Otto Aicher. A 
son asks his father to accept a funeral in return for the 
gift of life: '*Tu mihi das lucem vitas, do mortis 
honores."^ But the exclusive reference to the earliest 
cares of motherhood may very well point to a subse- 
quent incapacity for later duties as the mother of a 
household. 

Returning to the subject of Shakespeare's will, it is 
to be observed that it was made up from an earlier 
draft, as appears by the erasures and interlineations. 
It has been supposed that it was drawn up in the 
January preceding the poet's death, owing to the title 
having contained the word "Januarii," altered to 
'' Martii." The heading as it now stands, when trans- 
lated, is to the effect that the date of the document was 
the 25th of March, in the fourteenth year of King 
James' reign in England, and its forty-ninth year 
in Scotland, and in the year of our Lord 1616. The 
25th of March was the first day of the legal year 1616, 
and the second day of the fourteenth regnal year of 
King James ; so that if it had ever been intended to 
execute the will on the 25th of January, the whole 
frame of the heading would have been different. 

^ Ward's Diary, u.s., pp. 214-5 ' P* ^^o. To tlie latter passage is 
added the reflection, " Subito tollitur, qui diu toleratur. " 

^ Aicher, Hortus Variarum Inscriptionum, etc., Salisburgi, 1676, 
i. 403-4. {Licccz in S. Salvatore, Filius Patri.) 



230 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

The will was duly signed and published on the 25th 
of March, the witnesses to the publication, as then 
required by law, being Mr. Collins, the lawyer from 
Warwick, and Julius Shaw, John Robinson, Hamnet 
Sadler, and Robert Whatcot,^ all of Stratford. It was 
duly proved in London by Mr. Hall, on the 2nd of 
June following, power being reserved for his wife to 
come in and prove, if necessary. 



n 

Shakespeare's death — description of the stratford 
monument — detailed notes on the epitaph — ^john 
hall : its possible author 

On the 23rd of April, Shakespeare died of the fever 
mentioned by Mr. Ward. Of ''low typhoid fever," 
says Dr. Severn in his edition of the vicar's Diary, 
"which clings to the sickening heart, and fastens on 
the pallid brow for days and weeks, and sometimes for 
months together."- It is plain that it was thought 
to be contagious, since the funeral took place on the 
25th. The grave was in the chancel, but there was no 
vault or brickwork — nothing, indeed, but his male- 
diction to protect his "house of clay." He lay close 
to the door that led to the bone-vault, and he dreaded, 
no doubt, that his place would be required for another 
tithe-owner and his remains be cast aside: "Not 
a friend, not a friend greet my poor corpse, where 
my bones shall be thrown."^ We know that his 
hope was fulfilled ; but it was only because no 
one dared "to move the maladictive stones." A 
tradition arose among the clerks and sextons that, 
to carry out his wishes, he was buried seventeen 

^ "Whattcott" in original signature. 

^ Ward's Diary, u.s., p. 68. ^ Twelfth Night, ii. 4, 63. 



HIS DEATH 231 

feet deep. It is all but a hundred years ago that 
the workmen building a vault were able to look 
through an opening into his grave, and saw nothing 
but a hollow space, with no signs of the earth having 
been touched. We know, however, that his appre- 
hensions were justified by what happened afterwards 
to the grave of his daughter Susanna and the plun- 
dered vault of his little " niece Elisabeth." 

The monument in Stratford Church was erected 
either in or before 1623. The reference by Leonard 
Digges, in his commendatory verses prefixed to the 
first Folio, although very general, shows that he knew 
of such a work by November in that year.^ There 
is no reason to doubt Dugdale's statement that the 
whole monument was the work of Gerard Johnson of 
Southwark, the son of a tomb-cutter from Amsterdam. ^ 
Johnson had been employed in 1614 to erect the 
monument, in the east wall of the chancel, to Mr. John 
Combe. It seems probable, from the date and lettering 
of the inscription on Mrs. Shakespeare's brass plate, 
that this sculptor came to set up Shakespeare's me- 
morial in the autumn of 1623, and added the lines 
in honour of his wife. Her grave was interposed 
between the north wall of the chancel and the grave 
of her husband, so that the blessing and the curse 
inscribed on his place of burial protected her remains 
as well. 

The bust on the monument, in its present state, can 
hardly be regarded as a portrait, although Mr. Halli- 
well-Phillipps held that a copy of the whitened figure 
was the best memorial of Shakespeare that the public 
could then possess, "being so much superior in 

1 " When that stone is rent, 
And Time dissolves thy Stratford moniment, 
Here we alive shall view thee still." 
2 Dugdale, Diary, ed. W. Hamper, F.S.A., 1827, p. 99. "Gerard 
Johnson" is, of course, merely the Ang-licised form of Geraert Janssen. 
See Diet. Nat. Biog., vol. xxix. , s.v. Janssen. 



232 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

authenticity to any other resemblance."^ The white- 
washing, he said, "did not altogether obliterate the 
semblance of an intellectual human being," but when 
it was coloured again in 1861, he considered that it 
became ''a miserable travesty." "This bust was 
originally coloured to resemble life . . . the eyes being 
of a light hazel, and the hair and beard auburn. The 
dress consisted of a scarlet doublet, over which was 
a loose black gown without sleeves." ^ It was repainted 
in 1748 by John Hall of Stratford, at the expense 
of John Ward, the actor, grandfather of the Kembles 
and their sister, Mrs. Siddons. Ward gave the pro- 
ceeds of a performance of Othello at the Town Hall to 
this object in September, 1746. In 1793 it was painted 
white, at the suggestion of Malone. "Stranger, to 
whom this Monument is shown," runs the famous 
inscription (1810) in the visitor's book, " Invoke the 
Poet's curse upon Malone." In 1861 little retouching 
was found necessary, for when the bust was immersed 
in a carefully prepared bath, the old colours reappeared 
with some distinctness. The bust is so unlike the 
Droeshout print in the first Folio, or the portrait, now 
at Stratford, from which that print was probably copied, 
that the presentments might well belong to different 
persons. The great surgeon, John Bell, when he saw 
the coloured bust, and Sir Francis Chantrey, who 
examined it when coated with white paint, both said 

^ Notes and Queries^ 25th October, 1851. In Outlines, i. 297, the same 
statement of authenticity is repeated on behalf of this and the Droeshout 
frontispiece of the first Folio. 

'^ R. B. Wheler, History and Antiquities of Stratford-on-Avon, 1806, 
p. 71. Severn (Ward's Diary, pp. 71-2) thus describes the form of the 
monument. The bust is "inarched between two Corinthian columns of 
black marble, with gilded bases and capitals, with a cushion before him, 
a pen in his right hand, and his left resting- on a scroll. Above the 
entablature are his armorial bearings," etc. A young Oxonian, about 
a century ago, while on a visit to Dr. Davenport at the vicarage, took 
the original stone pen from the poet's hand ; while trifling with it he let 
it fall, and it was shivered to atoms. A quill pen now occupies the place. 



HISTORY OF HIS MONUMENT 233 

that they saw traces of the use of a mask. Some man's 
face had been mechanically copied; but they expressed 
no opinion as to whether that man was Shakespeare. 
Not many years after the bust was set up the church 
was subjected to a course of vile injury, which must 
have lessened the value of the memorial as a portrait. 
The vicarage of Stratford was held from 1619 to 1638 — 
or, according to Wheler's list, till 1640 — by the Rev. 
Thomas Wilson, b. d. In 1635, Archbishop Laud's vicar- 
general visited Warwickshire. The Commissioners 
suspended Mr. Wilson of Stratford ''for grossly par- 
ticularising in his sermons, for suffering his poultry to 
roost, and his hogs to lodge in the Chancel, for walking 
in the church to con his sermon in time of Divine 
Service," etc. The suspension was to last, subject to 
Laud's agreement, for only three months, since Mr. 
Wilson promised amendment, and was said "to be 
a very good scholar, and was the son of a very grave 
conformable Doctor of Divinity."^ 

The English inscription below the bust is of a very 
conventional type. This and the Latin couplet above, '^ 
may be ascribed to Mr. Hall, Shakespeare's son-in- 
law, whose Latin style is known to have been concise 
and fairly correct. ^ The preliminary couplet, it must 

^ Calendar of Domestic State Papers for 1635, ed. Bruce. See tran- 
script in preface, p. xl. The abstract itself, made by Sir Natlianiel Brent 
as vicar-g"eneral, bears date i6th July (Dom. Car. i. ccxciii. , No. 128). 
- Ivdicio Pylivm, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, 

Terra tegit, popvlvs mseret, Olympvs habet. 
Stay Passenger, why goest thou by so fast ? 
Read if thou canst, whom envious Death hath plast. 
With in this monument Shakspeare : with whome, 
Quick nature dide : whose name, doth deck this Tombe, 
Far more, then cost : Sith all, that He hath writt, 
Leaves living art, but page, to serve his witt. 
^ Elze, Williatn Shakespeare, Eng. trans. , 508-9 ; Brandes, WiUiajn 
Shakespeare, Eng. trans., ii. 410, consider Hall's authorship probable. 
Halliwell-Phillipps, it.s,, i. 285, says : " It is not likely that these verses 
were composed either by a Stratfordian, or by any one acquainted with 
their destined position." 



234 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

be confessed, has somewhat of a Dutch complexion. 
The phrase "Olympus habet" is remarkably like the 
wording of an inscription once in the church of St. 
Vitus at Leeuwarden. The church has been de- 
stroyed ; but the epitaphs are probably preserved in 
the old tower that formed the belfry. The capital of 
Friesland was famous for quaint epitaphs, and was 
reported, indeed, to possess no other attractions. 
Father Aicher was a monk at Leeuwarden before he 
became a Professor at Salzburg, and we find in his 
collection a Frisian epitaph on one Peter Tyara, whose 
body lay in the earth, while " Olympus " had taken his 
soul. The verses may also be found in the Itinerary 
of Gotfried Hegenitius, printed at Leyden in 1630 by 
the Elzevirs.^ To come nearer home, there was a 
tomb in the Church of St. Martin's Outwich, at 
the junction of Threadneedle Street and Bishopsgate 
Street, set up in memory of Jacob Falck, Treasurer of 
Zealand, and Ambassador from the United Provinces 
to King James ; he died in 1603, and in one of his 
epitaphs, composed by A. Hunter, we find the same 
phrase about Olympus.^ This church was close to 
Crosby Hall, and to the house in which Shakespeare 
may have resided. We might go abroad, however, 
and still find the idea recurring. Welcker, for instance, 
published a collection of Greek inscriptions in 1828, 
and among others he copied an epitaph found on a 
sarcophagus in the square by the Great Mosque at 
Nicosia ; ^ and in this instance also we find something 

^ Aicher, op. cit,, i. 414, Leovardice hi cede S. Viii {No. 4): "Corpus 
habet terram, Sibi mentem sumpsit Olympus." G. Hegeniti Itinerarium 
Frisio-Hollmidicuvi, Lugd. Batavor. , 1630, p. 32. 

2 Stow, Survey of London, ed. Strype, 1720, bk. ii. p. 118: 
" QuEe natat Oceano Zelandia corpus, Olympus 
Ipse aiiimam, peregr^ hoc viscera marmor habet." 

A. Hunterus. 
^ F. T. Welcker, Sylloge Epigramtnatum Grcecorum, Bonnae, 1828, 
p. 41, No. 34 : " ^av Tpoxa-Srjv ^alpris, wapodlra, ^mov eiricrxov," ete. 



HIS EPITAPH 235 

about the soul being caught into Olympus, and an 
opening almost identical with the Shakespearean 
"Stay, passenger, why dost thou go so fast?" Was 
it then from London, or from Friesland, or, with far 
less likelihood, from the isle of Cyprus, that Mr. Hall 
derived his Olympian metaphor? It probably came 
from none of these sources by any course that could be 
directly traced. Mr. Ward quotes an epitaph from 
Warwick to the effect that death takes not all, "for 
his heavenly part hath sought the heavens, and his 
fame lives immortal on earth " ; ^ and there was an- 
other old epitaph of the same class in Stratford Church 
itself. We should take these into account, with what 
has been stated about St. Martin's Outwich, and with 
what Hall may probably have read in the works of a 
Puritan poet. Some of the classical writers had 
chosen Olympus, instead of Parnassus, as the Muses' 
home ; and Francis Rous had revived the idea in his 
Spenserian monody. One of the concluding stanzas 
of his Thiile represents a mourner left on earth by the 
envious Fates to weep alone after a poet's departure ; 
and it is probable that the phrase on Shakespeare's 
tomb was directly taken from this source : — 

" here to remaine, 
Where with lamenting noyse she plaineth still, 
Yet never can her plaints bring back againe 
That soul which mounted on Olympus hill, 
In sacred spirits and the Muses traine. 
Singing soule-pleasing tunes her dayes doth spend, 
Whose musick and whose dayes have never end."^ 

"The earth covers him, the people mourns him." 
" Populus m^ret" ; the whole nation is in grief. Mr. 
Ward moralised on the populus : "One says thus, 

^ Ward's Diary, p. 286 : " Sed non totus obit, petiit pars cselica Ccelum, 
Vivit et in terris, nescia fama mori." 

^ Thule, or Vertues Historic, by Francis Rons, printed for the Spenser 
Society, 1S78, p. 151 (bk. ii. canto 8.). 



236 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

from the populus, that is, the people, what can bee ex- 
pected but uncertaintie? as in the populus, or aspen tree, 
there is no shade, but the leaves are allways playing."^ 
The first line of the couplet has been hardly treated 
by the commentators. Even Pope was so careless as 
to read "ingenio" instead of ''judicio" at its com- 
mencement. " Judicio Pylium " refers to the wisdom 
of the Pylian chieftain, or "sage Nestor's counsels," 
if we borrow Ben Jonson's phrase. The epithet of 
"Pylian" comes from Ovid,^ and was thereby the 
more appropriate to the poet who made such faithful 
use of the Metamorphoses that "the sweet, witty soul 
of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shake- 
speare."^ He had the skill of Maro, of Virgil, "the 
master of the Epic," and the "genius," or inborn 
power, of Socrates. " Genio Socratem " : the proper 
name contains an evident false quantity, for no one 
will deny that the first vowel was originally long. 
Proper names, however, were constantly altered to 
suit the hard rules of prosody, long syllables being 
made short, and short sounds lengthened, for greater 
ease in poetry. The " Danaides " could never have 
appeared in a hexameter if their first vowel had not 
received an extra weight ; and Silius Italicus was 
allowed a similar licence when he was forced to 
mention "^tolides." We may find a great number 
of such cases by referring to the old grammarians, 
as Urban of Belluno or the Patronymica of Father 
Spadafora, published at Palermo in 1668.* In the last 

^ Ward's Diary, p. 291. 

2 Ovid, A7n. iii. 7, 41 : " Illius ad tactum Pylius iuvenescere possit"; 
id., Ex Ponto, i. 4, 10: "Pylio Nestore maior ero." See also the more 
familiar passage in Horace, Carm., i. 15, 22: " Non Pylium Nestora 
respicis ? " 

'^ F. Meres, Palladis Tamia (in Arber, English Garner, ii. 97). 

■* Spadafora, Patronymica Grceca, et Latina, etc. , a P. Placido Spatha- 
fora {S. J.), Panormi, 1668. See preface ex Urbani Bellunensis Gravi- 
fuatica, and p. 1S3 (DSnaides, vel prima ob necessitatem producta). 
For ^teiides, see id,, p. 8. 



WORDING OF HIS EPITAPH 237 

instance we get very near the solecism of the Stratford 
monument, for in speaking of the philosopher's son as 
''Socratides," the author indicates by a special mark 
that the first vowel might be used as long or short at 
pleasure.^ 

The point is so far important that it caused Steevens 
and some other commentators to propose the insertion 
of Sophocles into the epitaph, in place of Socrates ; 
though the result of the suggestion, if adopted, would 
have a mere triumph of sound over sense. We should, 
of course, lose the whole force of the allusion to the 
familiar oracle by which the Greek philosopher had 
been guided in the path of wisdom. Yet it is obvious 
that the author of the couplet was thinking of such 
a "genius" or familiar, as is so often mentioned in 
the plays. '' The Genius and the mortal instruments 
are then in council," as Brutus said ; and Troilus talks 
of the genius that cries " Come," when one must die.^ 
Have we not "the affably familiar ghost" in the 
eighty-sixth Sonnet? We might almost say that there 
is hardly a sonnet that does not indicate the influence 
of such a spiritual agency. We may take another 
illustration from Gabriel Harvey's Letters : " And yet 
have I on suer frende as harde as the world goith 
(I meane my familiar, the Pheere of that which 
attendid uppon M. Phaer in Kylgarran Forest when 
he translatid Virgils -^neidos) . . . that never yet 
faylid me at a pinche."^ The " Daemon " of Socrates 
was described as being in the nature of an oracle or 
divine monition, giving warning of evil. ' * I should like 
to tell you of a wonderful circumstance," said the phil- 
osopher in the Apology of Plato. "Hitherto the 
familiar oracle within me has constantly been in the 

^ Id., p. 96. 

2 Julius Ccesar, ii. i , 66-7 ; Troilus and Cressida, iv. 4. 
^' Letter-Book of Gabriel Harvey, ed. E. J. L. Scott (Camden Society), 
1884, pp. 72-3. 



238 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

habit of opposing me, even about trifles, if I was going 
to make a slip or error about anything : and now, as 
you see, there has come upon me that which may be 
thought, and is generally believed to be the last and 
worst end. But the oracle made no sign of opposition, 
either as I was leaving my house and going out in 
the morning, or when I was going up into this court, 
or while I was speaking, at anything I was going 
to say ; and yet I have often been stopped in the 
middle of a speech, but now in nothing I either said or 
did touching this matter has the oracle opposed me."^ 

The actual ending of the epitaph is faulty. It seems 
to be modelled on the inscription from Warwick : 
" Still lives on earth the undying fame."^ The words 
''living art" are taken from Love's Labour's Lost, but 
there is a curious change in their application. When 
the King of Navarre vowed that his Court should be a 
little Academe, " still and contemplative in living art," 
he was referring his young Lords to the contemplation 
of an Ars Vivendi, which might be called the science 
of right action, or the true ''living art."^ When we 
are told that "quick Nature died," we recognise a 
true Shakespearean idea. The poet had imagined the 
slaying of Death : " Death once dead, there's no more 
dying then."* In Venus and Adonis he foretold the 
same fate for Nature ; she is condemned for forging 
the moulds divine; she is to perish "as mountain- 
snow melts with the midday sun : — ^ 

"As burning fevers, agues pale and faint, 
Life-poisoning- pestilence and frenzies wood, 
The marrow-eating- sickness, whose attaint 
Disorder breeds by heating of the blood : 
Surfeits, imposthumes, grief, and damn'd despair, 
Swear Nature's death for framing thee so fair."*' 

^ Plato, Apologia Socratis, 40 A. ^ See p. 235, note i. 

^ Love s Labour's Lost, i. i, 13-14. ■* Sonnet cxlvi. 

® Venus and Adonis, 750. " Id. , 739-44." 



JOHN HALL 239 

''Quick" means more than living ; it rather imports 
vigour and liveliness, as of the "quick freshes" in 
Prospero's island,^ or "so green, so quick, so fair an 
eye as Paris hath."'" We read in old receipt-books of 
"quick oranges" and mixtures that taste "quick of 
the fruit." We may compare this mention of "quick 
Nature " with the personification of Nature in Jonson's 
poem : — 

" Nature herself was proud of his designs, 
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines ! 
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit, 
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit." ^ 



HI 

JOHN hall's case-books — INFORMATION WITH REGARD TO 
HIS WIFE AND DAUGHTER — HIS WIDOW 

Mr. Hall's eminence as a physician is shown by the 
records of remarkable cures, selected by himself and 
afterwards published by James Cooke, as will appear 
later. The extracts following will be found in Mr. 
Fennell's Shakespeare Repository.^ Dr. Bird, at one 
time Linacre Professor at Cambridge, made a careful 
examination of Mr. Hall's professional papers. "This 
learned author," he said, "lived in our time in the 
County of Warwick, where he practised physic many 
years, in great fame for his skill far and near ; those 
who seemed highly to esteem him, and whom by God's 
blessing he wrought these cures .upon, you shall find 
to be amongst others persons noble, rich, and learned ; 
and this I take to be a great sign of his ability." Mr. 



^ Tempest, iii. 2, 75. ^ Romeo and Juliet , iii. 5, 222-3. 

^ Jonson, Underwoods, xii. : " To the Memory of . . . William 
Shakespeare." 

■* 1853, No. 2. The article is contained in a few columns, so that 
specific references are needless. 



240 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

Cooke adds in his preface to the select observations : 
"It seems the author had the happiness (if I may so 
style it) to lead the way to that practice almost gener- 
ally used by the most knowing, of mixing Scorbutics 
in most remedies : It was then, and I know for some 
time after thought so strange that it was cast as a 
reproach upon him by those most famous in his pro- 
fession." We suppose that he learned his new 
methods at Paris or Montpellier ; Mr. Cooke remarked 
that he had been a traveller, and was acquainted with 
the French language, "as appeared by part of some 
Observations, which I got help to make English." 

Mr. Hall was a Puritan, and many of his patients 
were Roman Catholics; but even "such as hated his 
religion " were glad to avail themselves of his medical 
science. His case-books begin in 1617 with entries as 
to William, Lord Compton, who became Earl of North- 
ampton in the following year. Among the names 
of the patients we find " Mr. Drayton, an excellent 
poet," Dr. Thomas Holyoake, son of "the Mr. Holy- 
oake who framed the Dictionary,"^ and Mr. George 
Quiney, the curate, "of a good wit, expert in tongues 
and very learned." Among entries possessing a local 
interest we may notice the Stratford goodwives, 
" Goodywife Bets " and Goody Brown ; and the respect- 
able character of the title may be illustrated by Ward's 
notice of Goody Roberts, etc.,^ and by Queen Anne 
of Denmark's ironical habit of calling her daughter 
"Goody Palsgrave." There are entries as to Grace 
Court, "wife to my apothecary," Mr. Nash's servant 
lying at the Bear, "Browne, a Romish priest," with 

^ Francis Holyoake (1567-1653), rector of Southam, Warwickshire, 
1604-42, published his Dictionarium Etyniologicu77i Laiinum in 1633. This 
was enlarged in 1677 by his son, Thomas Holyoake (d. 1675), chaplain 
of Queen's College, Oxford, and prebendary of St. Peter's in Wolver- 
hampton. The son was himself in practice as a doctor for a time, and 
might have been cited by John Ward in his memorandum of clerical 
physicians, ^ s-g-i " Goodie Southerne," Ward's Diary, p." 249. 



JOHN HALL'S CASE-BOOKS 241 

• 

a memorandum "the Catholic was cured." There 
are several entries about Nonconformist divines, as 
Mr. Walker at Ilmington, Mr. Fossettand Mr. Wilson 
of Stratford, and the Rev, John Trap, "for his piety 
and learning second to none, and by much study 
fallen into hypochondriac melancholy." 

It appears that Mr. Hall used to send his convales- 
cents to Bath or the Hotwells near Bristol. Mrs. 
Delabarr, for example, "came to be so much better 
that she could walk and ride, and then would to the 
Bath" ; Mrs. Wilson "cooled her body" too much by 
drinking at St. Vincent's Well at the Hotwells, and 
had to be sent off to Bath in the same way. Shake- 
speare must have been quite familiar with the practice. 
The two Sonnets on "Cupid and his brand "^ were 
partly modelled on Spenser's picture of the boiling 
baths "which seethe with sacred fire,"^ and partly on 
an epigram in the Anthology then in the Palatine 
Library at Heidelberg, and now among the manu- 
scripts in the Vatican.^ But the Sonnets in question 
also show a real knowledge of the virtues of the 
" Bathonian King's Bath." The little love-god falls 
asleep with his torch at his side, which a votaress 
of Diana extinguishes in the bubbling spring : 

" And his love-kindling- fire did quickly steep 
In a cold valley-fountain of that ground ; 
Which borrow'd from this holy fire of love 
A dateless lively heat, still to endure, 
And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove 
Against strange maladies a sovereign cure." 

The best account of the place as it existed about the 
time when these Sonnets were written is to be found in 

^ Sonnets cliii. , cliv. 

■■^ Faerie Queene, ii. canto x. st. 26 : " Behold the boyling- bathes at 
Cairbadon, which seeth with secret fire eternally." 
^ Anth. Pal., ix. ep. 627 (Maptdyoi' I.xo^^'^'T'.kov) 

Ta5' UTTO Tots TrAardi'oi'S kivciXi^ rerpvixivo's virvo3 
evdev "Epws, Nvfi(pais Xa/XTrdda irapdefievos, etc. 
R 



242 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

Dr. Venner's Baths of Bathe ^ whereto is annexed '*a 
Censure of the medicinable faculties of the water 
of St. Vincent's Rocks near the City of Bristol.'''' 
Bath, he says, "is a little well-compacted citie . . . 
for goodnesse of ayre, neernesse of a sweet and delect- 
able River, &c. It is pleasant and happie enough ; 
but for the hot waters that boyle up even in the 
middest thereof, it is more delectable and happier, than 
any other of the Kingdome." ^ There were four public 
baths, besides the little bath for lepers, differing in 
their temperature or effects; "the Kings Bath is the 
hottest, and it is for beauty, largenesse, and efficacy 
of heat, a Kingly Bath indeed, being so hot as can be 
well suffered."^ Venner is very severe on the mounte- 
banks "quacking for patients," and when the season 
was over "quacking away to some other place" for 
work, "as Crowes seek for Carrion."^ In the course 
of his attack upon purse-milkers, he incidentally 
explains a difficult Shakespearean phrase. In the list 
of omens which heralded the birth of Richard III., 
when the owl shrieked and the night-crow cried, "the 
raven rook'd her on the chimney's top " ; * and Dr. 
Venner says of his bath-side mountebank : " You may 
also discerne him by his rooking up and downe, now 
here, now there, crooching unto one, insinuating with 
another, bragging and vainely boasting of his owne 
worth and skill ; as though he had monopolized to 
himselfe Artis arcana, or that u^sculapius were only 
included in his dishonest pate."° 

Dr. Hall's case-books contained various notes as to 
the health of his wife and daughter, which Mrs. Hall 
probably forgot when she sold the manuscripts. With- 
out entering into unnecessary details, we may observe 

^ Venner, Baths of Bathe, supplementary to Via Recta ad Vitam 
Longam, 1638, p. 310. 

■^ Id., p. 311. 3 Id., enlarged edition, 1650, p. 352. 

•* 3 Henry VI., v. 6, 47. ^ Venner, u.s., 1650, pp. 361-2. " 



THE HALLS' VISIT TO LONDON 243 

that in 1630 she is said to have had terrible pains in 
her joints, *'so that she could not lie in her bed, 
insomuch as when any helped her, she cried out 
miserably." Elizabeth Flail was in delicate health as 
a girl. "Elisabeth Hall, my only daughter," writes 
the Doctor, "vexed with tortura oi'is, or convulsion of 
the mouth. . . . The former form of her mouth and 
face was restored 5 January, 1624." He soon after- 
wards took her with him on a journey to London, 
where he had a house, which he wanted to inspect. 
" In the beginning of April, she went to London, and 
returning homewards the 22nd of the same month she 
took cold, and fell into the same distemper on the 
contrary side of the face, before it was on the left side, 
now on the right ; and although she was grievously 
afflicted with it, yet by the blessing of God she was 
cured in sixten days." 

"The Halls appear to have chosen a very unhealthy 
time for their excursion. All through the summer 
of 1624 there was a prevalence of ague and fevers of an 
especially virulent type. There seemed to be every 
chance of an outbreak of a more dangerous kind : — 

" As a planetary plague, when Jove 
Will o'er some high-viced city hang his poison 
In the sick air," ^ 

Dr. Chamberlain of Westminster wrote from his 
house in the Abbey Churchyard that there was no 
great epidemic as far as the summer had gone : " God 
keep it from among us, for we are in danger. But 
this spotted fever is cousin-german to it, at least, and 
makes as quick riddance almost."'^ It will be remem- 
bered that King James died of the prevalent " tertian " 
a few months afterwards, though Dr. George Eglisham 

^ Tivion of Athens, iv. 3, 108-10. 

'^ Letter of August 21st, 1624, quoted by C. Creigfhton, History of 
Epidemics, 1891, i. 504. See Dom. State Papers, vol. clxxi. , no. 66. 



244 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

and others accused the Duke of Buckingham and his 
mother of administering arsenic and a poisonous 
ointment.^ The King himself expected to die of his 
natural complaint, if Ward's entry is correct. He says 
that he heard from Mr. Brace that the King was lying 
on a couch shortly before his death, and his servants 
thought that he was asleep. "But hee starts up and 
tels them that hee was not, but was thinking that hee 
was an old man and must shortly die, and must leave 
behind him three fools, the King of Spaine, the King 
of France, and his owne sonne."^ 

Elizabeth Hall's health broke down soon after her 
return from London. "In the same year May the 
24th (1624), she was afflicted with an erratic fever; 
sometimes she was hot, by and by sweating, again 
cold, all in the space of half-an-hour, and thus she was 
vexed oft in a day." The old-fashioned doctors would 
have bled her nearly to death, before administering 
snake-root and jelly of vipers' skins, and tips of 
crabs' claws taken when the sun was in the sign of 
Cancer. Mr. Hall was of the French school, following 
Dr. Pons of Lyons, who had written against indis- 
criminate bleeding,^ and the learned Sir Theodore de 
Mayerne, who left the French Court to become phy- 
sician to King James. Elizabeth was saved by her 
father's skill and patience ; and we find him making 
a note long afterwards, "thus was she delivered from 
death and deadly diseases, and was well for many 
years." 

On the 22nd of April, 1626, she was married to Mr. 
Thomas Nash, eldest son of Mr. Anthony Nash of 

^ See Eglisham, Prodromiis vindictce in Diicein BucMnghaviice, pro 
vindenta ccede MagficB BritatmicB Regis Jacohi, nee non Marchionis 
Hamiltonii ac aIioru?n viror2t?n principuvi, 1626. 

'^ Ward's Diary, p. 1 19. 

^ Jacobus Pons, De nimis licentiosa ac liheraliore intempestativaqtie 
sajiguinis missione, qua hodie plerique abutuntur, brevis tractatio. 
Lvgdiini, 1596. 



MARRIAGE OF ELIZABETH HALL 245 

Welcombe, to whom Shakespeare had left money for 
a mourning-ring. In the entry upon the register she 
was called "Mistress Elisabeth Hall," the title being 
at that time given to young girls, as may be seen by 
Mr. Hall's own note of his attendance upon "Mrs. 
Mary Comb, of Stratford, aged about thirteen." Mr. 
Thomas Nash was about thirty-one years of age. He 
had studied law at Lincoln's Inn, just enough to in- 
volve his widow in a Chancery suit. He was entitled 
after his father's death to a dwelling-house in Chapel 
Street, close to New Place, to certain meadows by the 
Stone Bridge and the riverside, and to the tithes 
within the hamlet of Shottery. It seems to have been 
a great object to him to acquire the Shakespeare 
estates and to add them to what he held in the neigh- 
bourhood after his wife's decease.^ 

In 1632, Mr. Hall was in great danger. " I fell into 
a most cruel torture of my teeth, and then into a 
deadly burning fever, which then raged very much, 
killing almost all that it did infect, for which I used 
the following method, which by the help of God 
succeeded. ... I was not only much maciated but 
weakened, so that I could not move myself &c. Then 
my wife sent for two physicians [my friends] . . . and 
I became perfectly well, praised be God ! " Three 
years afterwards the malignant fever appeared in many 
parts of the country. Dr. Creighton regards it as 
having been the precursor of the Plague which raged 
so violently in the following year.^ Even in 1635, we 
are told, the Plague carried off 3,000 persons at Hull,^ 
and there were outbreaks in Kent and the eastern 
counties, where the infection lingered for a year or 
more. Mr. Hall seems to have been struck down very 
suddenly. He only had time to make a verbal will 

^ See Halliwell-PhilliiDps, ti.s., ii. 91-3. 

'^ C. Creighton, op. cit, i. 506-7. 

^ The actual number was 2,730 {id., i. 52S). 



246 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

before his death, and the malignancy of the fever is 
shown by his being buried the next day. For a 
"nuncupative" will, as it was called, hardly any 
ceremonies were at that time required. Malone gives 
a copy of the transcript, dated the 25th of November, 
1635.^ " Imprimis, I give unto my wife my house in 
London. Item, I give unto my daughter Nash my 
house in Acton. Item, I give unto my daughter Nash 
my meadow. Item, I give my goods and money unto 
my wife and my daughter Nash, to be equally divided 
betwixt them. Item, concerning my study of books, 
I leave them, said he, to you, my son Nash, to dispose 
of them as you see good. As for my manuscripts, I 
would have given them to Mr. Boles, if he had been 
here ; but forasmuch he is not here present, you may, 
son Nash, burn them or do with them what you 
please." The will was witnessed by Thomas Nash, 
and Mr. Simon Trapp, the curate ; and no executor 
having been appointed, administration was granted to 
his widow in the November following. 

Although Mr. Hall had sold the lease of the Strat- 
ford tithes in 1625, his relations were allowed to bury 
him in the chancel, as though he still enjoyed a 
rectorial privilege. The tombstone lies between those 
of his wife and son-in-law. The arms of Hall and 
Shakespeare are rudely displayed on a shield, with 
the inscription : ''Here lyeth the body of John Hall, 
Gent. : he marr : Susanna, ye daughter and coheire 
of Will. Shakespeare, Gent. : hee deceased Nover 25, 
Ao. 1635 aged 60." The Latin epitaph is not without 
interest. Its effect in English is as follows : " Here 
lies Hall, most renowned for his medical skill, expect- 
ing the glad joys of the Heavenly Kingdom : he was 
worthy for his deserts to rival Nestor in length of 
years, but those on earth are carried off by one day 
alike for all. Lest aught should be wanting to his 

^ Also in Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., ii. 6i. 



DEATH OF JOHN HALL 247 

tomb, his faithful wife is at hand, and he has the 
companion of his life as a comrade in death." 1 The 
verses, in Malone's opinion, could not have been 
inscribed before Mrs. Hall's own death in 1649, unless 
the last couplet was added at that time ; but there 
seems to be no reason why the epitaph should not 
have been written with a view to the future event. 

We know hardly anything about Shakespeare's 
books, except that they must have passed to Mr. Nash, 
and afterwards to his widow, as his residuary legatee. 
The poet had a Florio's Montaigne, if the autograph 
in the British Museum is genuine, and the Bodleian 
library has an Aldine Oirid with his signature, and 
a note : *' This little booke of Ovid was given to me by 
W. Hall, who sayd it was once Will. Shakespeare's." 
There is no list of the contents of the " study of books"; 
but it appears by several authorities that the phrase 
means a collection or library. The learned Elias 
Ashmole, for example, notes how he bought Mr. John 
Booker's study of books for £\\o.'^ Mr. Ward uses 
the phrase in the same way when quoting a story from 
one of the Russells : "An auncient minister in their 
country, a very good schollar . . . affirmd, that a 
divine could not handsomely furnish a studie for his 
use under 700 li. ; and he reckond itt upp to him, so 
much for such a sort of books, and so much for 
another ; as I remember, hee told mee 30 li. for 
bibles." 2 

At the time of Mr. Hall's death, the Nashes were 



^ " Hallius hie situs est mediea celeberrinius arte, 
Expeetans reg'ni g"audia l^ta Dei. 
Dignus erat meritis qui Nestora vinceret annis 

In terris omnes sed rapit sequa dies ; 
Ne tumulo quid desit, adest fidissima coujux, 
Et vitje comitein, nunc quoque mortis habet." 
'■^ Alenioirs of the Life of . . . Elias Ashmole, Esq. ; Drawn up by 
himself by way of Diary, London, 1717, p. 41 (21st May, 1667). 
^ Ward's Diary, p. 2S5. 



248 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

living in their own house, next door to New Place ; 
but, in accordance with Mrs. Hall's wish, they gave 
up their establishment and kept house with her until 
Mr. Nash's death. While they were all living together. 
New Place was sometimes called " Mr. Nash's house," 
even by himself; but it appears clearly by the parish- 
books that Mrs. Hall was both owner and rateable 
occupier.^ 

In 1636 they became intimate with some of Mrs. 
Shakespeare's relations. William Hathaway, who, 
according to Malone, was the poet's grandnephew, was 
farming the estate at Weston -upon -Avon. His 
brother Thomas came in that year to Stratford, when 
he was admitted into the Joiner's Company, and made 
a freeman of the Borough, paying fees as a " foreigner, " 
though the amount was reduced as a matter of grace. 
The brothers became trustees of the New Place estate 
upon a settlement being made in 1647, and they seem 
to have been accepted without any hesitation as mem- 
bers of the family. Thomas Hathaway had a son 
named William, who is believed to have died in youth, 
and there were five daughters : Rose, the eldest, was 
baptised at Stratford in 1640 ; Joanna married a Mr. 
Edward Kent ; and we hear of Judith, of Elizabeth, 
born in 1647, and Susanna, born in the following 
year.^ 

Mrs. Hall was living in New Place in July, 1643, 
when Queen Henrietta Maria made her triumphant 
entry into the town, and held her gay Court in the 
poet's old home.^ A few months afterwards Stratford 
was occupied by the Parliamentary forces, and it was 
on this occasion that Mr. James Cooke, a surgeon and 
general practitioner of high repute at Warwick, 

^ See Stopes, op. cit.^ p. 97. 

2 Malone, op. cit., ii. 1 15-16, where the date of Rose's baptism is 
given as 6th November, 1642. 

^ See Halliwell-PhilHpps, u.s., ii. loS-io. 



JAMES COOKE AND HALL'S NOTES 249 

obtained the medical notes prepared by Mr. Hall, and 
published a few years afterwards.^ Mr. Cooke was 
the author of Mellificium ChirurgicB^ which appeared 
in 1655. It was republished with a supplement as a 
duodecimo in 1662, and was enlarged into an octavo 
and a quarto in later issues. William Oldys had two 
portraits of Cooke in his collection, both by Robert 
White, the one taken at the age of sixty-four in an 
oval frame "with hair, and a short neck-cloth," and 
the other engraved about seven years afterwards. The 
cases selected by Mr. Hall were published some years 
after Cooke bought the manuscript. The full title is 
given by Mr. Fennell as follows: " Select observations 
on English Bodies, or Cures both Empericall and 
Historicall performed upon very eminent persons in 
desperate Diseases. First written in Latine by Mr. 
John Hall, physician, living at Stratford-upon-Avon, 
in Warwickshire, where he was very famous, as also 
in the counties adjacent, as appears by these Observa- 
tions drawn out of severall hundreds of his, as choy- 
sest ; Now put into English for common benefit by 
James Cooke Practitioner in Physick and Chirurgery : 
London, printed for John Sherley, at the Golden 
Pelican, in Little-Britain, 1657." 

An address to the friendly reader contains an ac- 
count of the editor's interview with Mrs. Hall about 
the year 1644." "Being in my art an attendant to 
parts of some regiments to keep the pass at the bridge 
of Stratford-upon-Avon, there being then with me a 
mate allied to the gentleman that writ the following 
observations in Latin, he invited me to the house of 
Mrs. Hall, wife to the deceased, to see the books left 
by Mr. Hall. After a view of them, she told me she 
had some books left by one that professed physic, with 

1 Halliwell-Phillipps, id., i. 276, puts the date of Cooke's examination 
of tiie papers earlier, " about the year 1642." 
" See preceding note. 



250 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

her husband, for some money. I told her, if I liked 
them, I would give her the money again ; she brought 
them forth, amongst which there was this with another 
of the Author's, both intended for the press. I being 
acquainted with Mr. Hall's hand, told her that one or 
two of them were her husband's, and showed them 
her ; she denied, I affirmed, till I perceived she begun 
to be offended. At last I returned her the money. 
After some time of trial of what had been observed, 
I resolved to put it to suffer according to perceived in- 
tentions, to which end I sent it to London, which after 
[being] viewed by an able Doctor, he returned answer 
that it might be useful, but the Latin was so abbre- 
viated or false, that it would require the like pains as 
to write a new one. After which, having some spare 
hours (it being returned to me), I put it into this 
garb, being somewhat acquainted with the author's 
conciseness, especially in the Receipts, having had 
some acquaintance with his apothecary." In a post- 
script he adds: "I had almost forgot to tell ye 
that these Observations were chosen by him from 
all the rest of his own, which I conjectured could 
be no less than a thousand, as fittest for public 
view." 

Mrs. Hall died at Stratford on the nth of July, 1649, 
and was buried in the chancel of the Parish Church 
five days afterwards. The date of her death is given 
by Dugdale as July the 2nd, but this shown by the 
register to be only a clerical error. The inscription 
on her tombstone was to the following effect : " Heere 
lyeth ye body of Svsanna, wife to John Hall Gent : ye 
davghter of William Shakespeare Gent. She deceased 
ye nth of Jvly, a.d. 1649, aged 66: 

Witty above her sexe, but that's not all, 
Wise to salvation was good Mistris Hall, 
Something of Shakespere was in that, but this 
Wholy of Him with whom she's now in blisse. 



DEATH AND EPITAPH OF MRS. HALL 251 

Then, passeng^er, has't ne're a teare 

To weepe with her that wept with all ? 
That wept yet set herselfe to chere 
Them up with comforts cordiall. 
Her Love shall live, her mercy spread, 
When thou ha'st ne're a teare to shed," 

The whole inscription was erased when her grave 
was disturbed at the beginning of the last century. 
There was a person named Watts living at Rhyon- 
Clifford on a property which is said once to have 
belonged to Mr. Hall. He appears to have acquired 
some interest in the Stratford tithes, and his relations, 
no doubt, put in the usual claim for a grave in the 
chancel. He was accordingly buried in Mrs. Hall's 
grave, her epitaph being erased. Malone has pre- 
served the form of the substituted inscription, which 
ran as follows: "Here lyeth the body of Richard 
Watts of Ryhon-Clifford, in the parish of old Strat- 
ford, Gent, who departed this life the 23d of May, 
Anno Dom. 1707, and in the 46th year of his age."^ 
The story of the restoration of Mrs. Hall's memorial 
is told by Mr. Neil in his Home of Shakespeare. The 
intruding lines were erased in 1844 ; the original in- 
scription was restored " by lowering the surface of the 
stone and re-cutting the letters " ; and the tombs of 
John Hall and Thomas Nash were also improved " by 
deepening the letters and re-cutting the armorial 
bearings."^ 

^ Malone, op. cit., ii. 618, note. 

^ Neil, Home of Shakespeare, 1871, p. 49. 



252 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 



IV 

JUDITH SHAKESPEARE — HER MARRIAGE TO THOMAS QUINEY 

HER PLACE IN HER FATHER'S WILL — THE QUINEY FAMILY — 
ALLUSIONS TO GROCERS AND DRUGGISTS IN SHAKESPEARE 

Before following the later fortunes of Mrs. Hall's 
daughter Elizabeth we must return to the story of 
Judith Shakespeare and her relations with the family 
of Quiney. Very little seems to be known about her 
life, though it was hoped at one time that something 
would be found out about her in Mr. Ward's diaries. 
The vicar had made a memorandum, of which the 
exact date does not appear, about several matters that 
required immediate attention. Among other things, 
he owed a letter to his brother in Gloucestershire ; he 
was to send to his friend, Tom Smith, for a certain 
acknowledgment, and, in between the two, he meant 
"to see Mrs. Queeny." This entry has been taken 
to refer to Shakespeare's younger daughter, but an 
examination of the circumstances will show that this 
can hardly be correct.^ 

Judith Shakespeare lived at home till her marriage 
in the February before her father's death, when she 
was just past thirty-one years of age. The marriage- 
entry in the register is as follows: "1615.^ Feab- 
ruary 10. Tho. Queeny tow Judith Shakespeare." 
Her husband was considerably younger than herself, 
having been baptised on the 26th of February, 
1589-90. He was the son of Mr. Richard Quiney, 
High Bailiff of Stratford, who died in 1602.^ 

The correspondence between this Richard Quiney 
and his brother-in-law, Abraham Sturley, about Strat- 
ford business, is printed in an appendix to the Life 

^ Ward's^ Z>?«rK, p. 184. ^ 1616, N.S. 

^ Malone, op. cit., ii. 613-14. 



THE QUINEY FAMILY 253 

by Malone ; but it may be convenient to extract one or 
two passages directly relating to Shakespeare, with 
a change into modern spelling to render them more 
generally intelligible. The letter from Sturley, dated 
the 24th of January, 1597-8, contains a reference to the 
tithes: "This is one special remembrance from your 
father's motion : it seemeth by him that our country- 
man, Mr. Shakespeare, is willing to disburse some 
money upon some odd yard-land or other at Shottery 
or near about us ; he thinketh it a very fit pattern to 
move him to deal in the matter of our tithes. By the 
instructions you can give him thereof, and by the 
friends he can make therefor, we think it a fair mark 
for him to shoot at, and not unpossible to hit. If 
obtained, would advance him indeed, and would do 
us much good." The Borough was in great want 
of funds, and he writes in November of the same year 
that he has received the message importing that this 
countryman, Mr. William Shakespeare, would procure 
the money, "which I will like of as I shall hear 
when, and where, and how, and I pray let not 
go that occasion if it may sort to any indifferent con- 
ditions."^ 

Mr. Quiney's letter to Shakespeare was dated the 
25th of October, 1598. The important passages run 
in modern English as follows: "Loving countryman, 
I am bold of you, as of a friend, craving your help 
with ;^30 upon Mr. Bushell's and my security, or 
Mr. Mytten's with me. Mr. Rosswell is not come 
to London as yet, and I have especial cause. You 
shall friend me much in helping me out of all the 
debts I owe in London, I thank God, and much quiet 
my mind, which would not be indebted . . . My time 
bids me hasten to an end, and so I commit this [to] 
your care and hope of your help. I fear I shall not 
be back this night from the Court. Haste. The Lord 

^ Id., ii. 566. See also transcripts in Halliwell-Phillipps, n.s., ii. 57-60. 



254 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

be with you and with us all, Amen ! from the Bell 
in Carter Lane. . . . Yours in all kindness, Rye. 
Quyney." ^ 

This gentleman had eight children : the three 
daughters were named Elizabeth, Anne, and Mary ; 
Adrian, the eldest son, named after his uncle, a former 
High Bailiff, was born in 1586; Richard, who became 
a grocer in London, was born in the following year ; 
Thomas, as we have seen, was twenty-seven when he 
married Shakespeare's daughter ; William was born 
in 1593, according to Boswell's note on Malone, John 
in 1597, and George in April, 1600. The last became 
the Curate of Stratford, and died in 1624 of a consump- 
tion.^ We have already mentioned his illness, and 
we need only add Mr. Hall's concluding note to the 
effect that his patient was a person of good parts, and 
for so young a man was very learned in every subject. 

Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps considered that the Quineys 
must have been anxious to hasten their marriage : 
"they were married," he says, "without a licence, an 
irregularity for which a few weeks afterwards they 
were fined and threatened with excommunication by 
the ecclesiastical court at Worcester."^ There is 
something obscure about the statement. The usual 
course was to have banns instead of any licence, except 
during prohibited periods. Even the Princess Eliza- 
beth had followed the customary rule. The Vicar 
of Stratford heard from Mr. Washburn how "King 
James would have his daughter askt three times in 
the church, which accordingly shee was, in St. 
Margaret's, Westminster.""^ It is most improbable 
that the incumbent would have wilfully incurred the 
punishment due for omitting the banns, in the absence 
of a dispensation ; but it has already been shown that 

^ See facsimile and transcript in Halliwell-Phillipps, id., i. 166-7. 
^ Malone, op. cit., ii. 613. ^ Halliwell-Phillipps, li.s., i. 255. 

^ Ward's Diary, p. 172. 



JUDITH SHAKESPEARE'S MARRIAGE 255 

there were great differences of opinion about the 
necessity of a licence to marry within the periods of 
prohibition. In the year of Judith Shakespeare's 
marriage, Septuagesi ma Sunday fell on January 7th, old 
style ; the 7th of April following was the First Sunday 
after Easter, when the marriage season commenced 
again. It is clear that Thomas and Judith ought to 
have bought a dispensation, if only to give the officials 
their ancient fee. From Falstaff's mouth we learn of 
another rule that was rapidly becoming obsolete. 
"Marry, there is another indictment upon thee, for 
suffering flesh to be eaten in thy house, contrary to 
the law, for the which I think thou wilt howl " ; and 
"All victuallers do so," is all that can be urged in 
reply." ^ It was held to be no answer in Judith's case. 
No doubt the biographer is right in saying that they 
were actually sued ; the important point for us to con- 
sider is the effect which these proceedings had upon 
Shakespeare. There is no occasion to suppose that the 
younger daughter would have stood in her sister's 
place if the marriage had been canonically correct ; 
but it certainly looks as if Shakespeare apprehended 
that the marriage might be declared void. Every 
care apparently was taken to meet the danger. The 
term of three years was fixed from the date of the will, 
during which certain events were to happen, according 
as Judith had or had not a child or children ; Thomas 
Quiney is not mentioned by name, and, in fact, is only 
vaguely indicated as the person who might be Judith's 
husband after the expiration of the three-years period. 
To make the point clear, it may be convenient to take 
the exact words of that part of the will, the words 
struck out and inserted in the clauses being indicated 
by italics and brackets. The title and heading are 
written out at length ; but the pious exordium, dis- 
posing of soul and body, is omitted. 

^ 2 Henry IV., ii. 4, 371. 



256 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

" Vicesimo Quinto Die { Januarii ersised) Martii (Inserted) 
anno reg-ni domini nostri Jacobi, nunc regis Anglie, &c. 
decimo quarto, et Scotiae xlix'^ annoque Domini 1616, T. 
{TestamentiLm) Wmi Shackspeare. In the name of God, 
amen ! I William Shackspeare of Stratford-upon-Avon in 
the countie of Warr, gent., in perfect health and memorie, 
God be praysed, doe make and ordayne this my last will and 
testament in manner and forme foUoweing. . . . Item I gyve 
and bequeath unto my {sonne in L erased) daughter Judyth 
one hundred and fyftie pounds of lawfull English money, to 
be paied unto her in manner and forme followeing, that ys 
to saye, one hundred pounds in discharge of her 7narriage 
porcion (inserted) within one yeare after my deceas, with 
consideracion after the rate of twoe shillinges in the pound 
for soe long tyme as the same shal be unpaied unto her after 
my deceas, and the fyftie pounds residewe thereof upon her 
surrendring 0/ (inserted) or gyving of such sufficient securitie 
as the overseers of this my will shall like of to surrender or 
graunte &c. (the Rowington copyhold). Item I gyve and 
bequeath unto my saied Daughter Judith one hundred and 
fyftie pounds more, if shee or anie issue of her bodie be 
lyvinge att thend of three yeares next ensueing the daie of 
the date of this my will, during which tyme my executours 
to paie her consideracion from my deceas according to the 
rate aforesaied ; and if she dye within the saied terme with- 
out issue of her bodye, then my will ys, and I doe gyve and 
bequeath one hundred poundes thereof to my neece Eliza- 
beth Hall, and the fiftie poundes to be sett fourth by my 
executours during the lief of my sister Johane Harte, and 
the use and profhtt thereof cominge shal be payed to my 
saied sister Jone, and after her deceas the saied 1. li. shall 
remaine amongst the children of my saied sister equallie to 
be devided amongst them ; but if my saied daughter Judith 
be lyving att thend of the saied three yeares, or anie yssue 
of her bodye, then my will ys and soe I devise and bequeath 
the saied hundred and fyftie poundes to be sett out by my 
executours and overseers (inserted) for the best benefitt of her 
and her issue, and the stock (inserted) not to he (Inserted) 
paied unto her soe long as she shal be marryed and covert 
baron {by my executours and overseers erased) ; but my will 
ys that she shall have the consideracion yearelie paied unto 



HIS LEGACIES TO JUDITH 257 

her during her lief, and, after her deceas, the saied stock and 
consideracion to be paied to her children, if she have anie, 
and if not, to her executours or assignes, she lyving the 
saied terme after my deceas, Provided that if such husbond 
as she shall att thend of the saied three yeares be marryed 
unto, or att anie after, ^ doe suflficientle assure unto her and 
thissue of her bodie lands awnswereable to the porcion by 
this my will gyven unto her, and to be adjudged soe by my 
executours and overseers, then my will ys that the saied 
cl. li. shal be paied to such husbond as shall make such 
assurance, to his owne use. Item, I gyve and bequeath 
unto my saied sister Jone xx /z, and all my wearing apparell, 
to be paied and delivered within one yeare after my deceas ; 
and I doe will and devise unto her the house (inserted) with 
thappurtenaunces in Stratford, wherein she dwelleth, for her 
naturall lief, under the yearelie rent of xii^. Item, I gyve 
and bequeath unto her three sonns, William Harte, (blank) 
Hart, and Michaell Harte, fyve poundes a peece, to be payed 
within one yeare after my deceas {to he sett otUfor her within 
one yeare after my deceas by my executours, with thadvise and 
direccions of my overseers, for her best proffitt untill her 
m^arriage, and then the same with the increase thereof to be 
paied unto her, all but the last word erased). Item, I gyve 
and bequeath unto {her erased) the saied Elizabeth Hall 
(inserted) All my plate except my brod silver and gilt bole 
(inserted), that I now have att the date of this my will. 
Item, I gyve and bequeath unto the poore of Stratford afore- 
saied tenn poundes &c. Item, I gyve and bequeath to my 
saied daughter Judith my broad silver gilt bole. ... In 
witnes whereof I have hereunto put my {scale erased) hand 
(inserted) the dale and yeare first above written. — By me, 
William Shakespeare." 

Some of the erasures in the portions of the document 
here extracted might lead the reader to infer that the 
original draft contained provisions far more beneficial 
to Judith and her husband than those which the will 
contained as finally executed. 

The position and circumstances of Mr. Thomas 

1 i.e. at any (time) after. 



258 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

Quiney, at the time of his marriage and afterwards, 
appear by the extracts from the Corporation Books 
collected and published by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps.^ 
He was living, when he married, in a house on the 
west side of the High Street, but after a few months 
he moved into a larger house, called the Cage, on the 
opposite side, ''at the corner of Fore Bridge Street," 
where he had set up a vintner's shop. His mother, 
Mrs. Elizabeth Quiney, had kept a tavern ever since 
Richard Quiney's death ; and we may suppose that 
the newly married couple obtained a transfer or a 
renewal of her licence. Thomas Quiney is shown 
to have had a good education by his fine penmanship, 
and by his use of a French motto used in one of his 
accounts for 1623. ^ We are told that he was admitted 
to the freedom of the Borough in 161 7, and acted as 
Chamberlain for two years after his first election in 
162 1. He did not retire from the Town Council till 
1630, when his affairs were in an unfortunate position, 
since "in that year's annals" it is recorded that he 
was fined a shilling for swearing, the amount showing 
that he was treated as a person of low station ; and 
that he was also fined a like amount for allowing 
townsmen to tipple in his house. The proceedings in 
the last case were under the Tippling Acts of the first 
and fourth years of James I., by which inquiry was to 
be made before the Justices of Assize and in every 
court-leet as to persons being drunk and continu- 
ing drinking or tippling, or suffering persons to 
continue drinking or tippling. The keepers of ale- 
houses and victuallers were in like manner bound 
by their recognisances not to allow idle persons to 
remain in their houses long to sit singing, trifling, or 
drinking, to the maintenance of idleness. 

Judith Quiney was unfortunate in her marriage. All 

^ See Halliwell-Phillips, op. cit., i. 305-7. 
^ See facsimiles, id., i. 256. 



THOMAS QUINEY'S MISFORTUNES 259 

her children died young, and her husband left her 
about 1652 to get support from his brother in London. 
Shakespeare Quiney, their first child, was baptised on 
the 23rd of November, 1616, and died in the following 
May. In the entries as to his baptism and burial his 
father is styled ''gentleman" ; but the epithet is dis- 
continued afterwards, in consequence, perhaps, of his 
trading as a vintner. ''Richard, son of Thomas 
Quiney," was baptised the 9th of February, 161 7-18, 
and Thomas, the third and last child, on the 23rd of 
January, 1619-20. Thomas died first, at the end of 
January, 1638-9, and Richard within five weeks after- 
wards.^ 

It appears from the local records that Mr. Quiney 
was at one time in danger of a prosecution for selling 
unwholesome and adulterated wine. The practice, no 
doubt, was common ; but a conviction made the offender 
liable to very formidable penalties. Mr. Quiney's 
excuse was that he had dealt for years with Mr. Francis 
Creswick, of Bristol, who had always supplied him 
with good wine, and in quantities of several hogsheads 
at a time, and that on this particular occasion someone 
must have tampered with the stock during its transit 
from Bristol to Stratford. One may suspect, however, 
that he had become too expert in the mystery of 
making artificial wines and restoring pricked and 
musty vintages. There were plenty of tavern-keepers 
who could make claret or alicant out of cider and mul- 
berries, and malmsey or a pint of "brown bastard"^ 
with thin white wine and a few raisins of the sun. 
Mr. Quiney would probably not get any Rhenish at 
Bristol, but he would find plenty of ordinary red wine, 
"of an austere sharp taste," ^ which it was customary 

^ Malone, op. cit., ii. 615-19. Malone gives date of Thomas Quiney 
the younger's baptism as 29th August, 1619 ; but see Halliwell-PhiUipps, 
op, cit., ii. 52, 

^ I Henry IV., ii. 4, 82 ; Measure for Measure, iii. 2, 4. 

^ Venner, Via Recta ad Vitam Longani, 1638, p. 34. 



26o SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

to roughen and make still more astringent with sloe 
juice ; he could buy claret, a pure, quick wine, as 
Venner says, "scarcely inferiour to any of the regall 
wines of France," and white wine of Orleans, hardly 
inferior to muscadel, and the usual sacks and canaries.^ 
The spirits, cordials, and vinegar would probably be 
made at home. The extracts from the same records 
show that the Quineys also dealt in tobacco, which had 
come rapidly into fashion in spite of the royal counter- 
blasts. Times had changed since Quiney's uncle had 
written to warn his father of the dangers of the 
town — "Take heed of tobacco whereof we hear per 
William Perry" — and had recommended instead 
"some good burned wine or aquavita and ale strongly 
mingled without bread for a toast. "^ Bristol supplied 
the jovial weed in all the varieties of " ball, leaf, cane, 
and pudding-packs," described by the smoke-hating 
Josuah Sylvester.^ Aubrey thus describes its introduc- 
tion into Wiltshire. "In our part of North Wilts, 
e.g. Malmesbury hundred, it came first into fashion 
by Sir Walter Long. I have heard my grandfather 
Lyte say that one pipe was handed from man to man 
round about the table. They had first silver pipes ; 
the ordinary sort made use of a walnut shell and a 
straw. It was sold then for it's wayte in silver. I have 
heard some of our old yeomen neighbours say that 
when they went to Malmesbury or Chippenham 
market, they culled out their biggest shillings to lay in 
the scales against the tobacco."* Another novelty was 
caviare, a proverbial object of dislike, which became 
a fashionable provoker of thirst after Shakespeare's 

1 Id., pp. 29-33. 

2 See Abraham Sturley's letter of 4th November, 1598, in Malone, op. 
cit, ii. 569-72. 

^ Sylvester, Tobacco Battered, and the Pipes Shattered . . by a 
Volley oj Holy Shot Thundered from Mount Helicon, in Works, 1641, 
p. 579, col. 2. 

* Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, 1898, ii. 181, sub Sir Walter Raleigh, 



THOMAS QUINEY'S TRADE 261 

time. Beaumont and Fletcher had their jest against 
a simpering novice, as ''one that ne'er tasted caveare, 
nor knows the smack of dear anchovies."^ All the 
accounts of its introduction are derived from the 
anonymous Nowveait Voyage du Nord; it appears 
to have been exported from the Obi and Volga by 
Armenian merchants, and to have found its way to 
England through Genoa or Venice. ''There is an 
Italian sauce," says Venner, "called Camaro, which 
begins to be in use with us, such vaine affectors are we 
of novelties. It is prepared of the Spawne of Sturgion : 
the very name doth well expresse its nature, that it 
is good to beware of it." ^ 

The date of Thomas Quiney's death is unknown. 
He survived his brother Richard, and received an 
annuity of £^ charged by his will on the family lands 
at Shottery. He does not seem to have returned to 
Stratford. The tavern was taken over by a Thomas 
Quiney the younger, one of the London grocer's sons, 
and Mrs. Judith lived on alone ; she died at the 
age of seventy-seven, and was buried at Stratford on 
the 9th of February, 1662, according to our way of 
reckoning. 

It is suggested in Dr. Severn's preface to the Diary 
that Mr. Ward may have been appointed vicar by the 
King early in 1662, Mr. Alexander Bean, the Presby- 
terian minister, having been removed soon after the 
Restoration. 3 If the appointment had been made at 
the beginning of the year, the note as to "Mrs. 
Queeny " might, of course, be taken as referring to 
Shakespeare's daughter. But it appears that this view 
is incorrect, and that Mr. Bean was only dismissed 

^ Beaumont and Fletcher, Nice Valour, act v. sc. i. Nares' Glossary, 
s. V. , refers also to Randolph, Mnse's Looking Glass, act ii, sc. 4 : " To feed 
on caveare, and eat anchovies." See Cartwrig-ht, The Ordinary, act ii. 
sc. I, in Dodsley's Old Plays, 1826, vol. x. , and the note thereon. 

^ Venner, Via Recta, 1650, p. 142. 

•^ Ward's Diary, p. 16. Severn's statement is positive. 



262 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

under the provisions of the Act of Uniformity, which 
came into operation upon the 24th of August, 1662, 
known as "Black Bartholomew's Day." Mr. Bean 
would not be reordained or take the oaths of obedience 
and non-resistance. Ward tells us how his neighbour, 
Mr. Burges of Sutton Coldfield, submitted and then 
bitterly repented; "for the leaving of his ministrie 
he took much comfort in itt, since itt could not bee 
injoyed but uppon the terms wherein now itt is."^ 
Ward's own appointment is to be found in the Book 
of Entries for the diocese, which shows that he was 
inducted on the loth of December, 1662, under the 
patronage of King Charles II. 

The Mrs. Quiney whom Mr. Ward visited may have 
been the wife of one of Judith's nephews. William 
Quiney had left the London business, and had been 
established at Shottery since 1656 ; and Thomas, his 
brother, as we have seen, was living at the Cage. 
The grocer's and druggist's business had been carried 
on in partnership with John Sadler, another Stratford 
man. The shop was at the sign of the " Red Lion " in 
Bucklersbury, at the end of the Poultry, and close 
to the Royal Exchange. Mr. Ward notes that "the 
Exchange kept in Lumbard Street before itt came to 
Cornhill."^ This removal, however, had taken place 
long before Quiney and Sadler sold Italian goods 
at the "Red Lion," or Shakespeare himself had come 
to town. 

It was on the 23rd of January, 1570 (old style), 
that the Queen dined with Sir Thomas Gresham, and 
afterwards paid a State visit to the "Burse." She 
inspected all the principal rooms, and especially the 
magazine called the Pawne, which was "richly fur- 
nished with all sorts of the finest wares," and was 
pleased to proclaim that the place should for ever after- 

1 Id., p. 99. 2 /^_^ p_ 297. 



THE QUINEYS OF BUCKLERSBURY 263 

wards be known as the Royal Exchange.^ The Poultry 
and Bucklersbury both opened into the wide market- 
place of West Cheap, nearly opposite to the Great 
Conduit, to which fresh water was brought in pipes 
underground from Paddington. The whole street called 
Bucklersbury, said Stow, was in his time possessed on 
both sides throughout by grocers and apothecaries ; 
but a great part of the business carried on by them 
would now be considered to belong to the herbalist, the 
perfumer, and the chemist.^ Shakespeare must have 
known the place well, if he lived in the immediate 
neighbourhood. He was fond of referring to drugs 
and tinctures. We are told, for instance, of a life in 
love '*as luscious as locusts," that shall turn "as bitter 
as coloquintida."^ When the heart wants some great 
cordial it is bidden, ''Get you some of this distilled 
Cardials Benedictus, and lay it to your heart : it is the 
only thing for a qualm. "^ When the summer's sweet- 
ness is preserved by art, we have beauty's child remain- 
ing as a prisoner or hostage — ''a liquid prisoner pent 
in walls of glass " : — ^ 

" O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem 
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give ! 
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem 
For that sweet odour which doth in it live. 
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye 
As the perfumed tincture of the roses, 
Hang on such thorns and play as wantonly 
When summer's breath their masked buds discloses : 
But, for their virtue only is their show, 
They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade, 
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so ; 
Of their sweet breath are sweetest odours made."^ 

^ Nichols, Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, i. 275. Stow, Survey, ed. 
Strype, bk. ii. p. 135. 

2 Stow, U.S., bk. iii. p. 27. In ii. 200, he speaks of its inhabitants 
as principally Drugsters and Furriers. 

^ Othello, i. 3, 354-5. * Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 4, 73-5. 

'' Sonnet v. ^ Sonnet liv. 



264 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

We have a mention of the very place in question 
from Falstaff in the Merry Wives of Windsor: — 

*' I cannot cog and say thou art this and that, Uke a many 
of these Hsping hawthorn-buds, that come Hke women in 
man's apparel, and smell like Bucklersbury in simple- 
time. "^ 

Another indication of Shakespeare's interest in the 
subject lies in the fact that he employed a separate 
druggist of his own. His son-in-law Hall tells us 
that he himself employed Mr. Court, of Stratford, 
but that John Nason was Shakespeare's apothecary. 
He has an entry in his case-book about attendance upon 
John Nason, there described as a barber ; but Mr. 
Fennell pointed to the undoubted fact that barbers in 
those days were not confined to shaving and wig- 
making, but let blood and drew teeth, and generally 
undertook the lower branches of medicine. There may 
have been some economy in having a drugster to one- 
self, since Ward tells us that "some doctors had a 
noble out of the pound of their apothecaries ; many 
a crowne, as an apothecarie in London told mee."^ 
There was less need of any intervention in those days, 
when everyone knew the virtues of herbs, and could 
send out for powdered eye-bright to freshen the bread 
and butter, or a pipefull of sage, rosemary, and betony 
for "rheumatism in the brain," as might be required. 
Ward's diaries are full of information on such points, 
which he perhaps got from the Quineys. Liquorice, 
for instance, was much used in the stillroom. He tells 
us of a white juice, as well as the black ; the latter 
is made "by juicing the little strings of the roots." 
"Liquorish (is) planted much about Pontefract, in 
Yorkshire. The white juice is deer, about 4 shillings 
a pound, as I was certainly informed."^ Dr. Venner 

^ Merry Wives of Windsor, iii, 3, 76-9. 

■■^ Ward's Diary, p. 278. ^ Id., p. 290. 



DRUGGISTS AND HERBALISTS 265 

was very great upon the excellent virtues of burnet, 
now mostly remembered as occurring in a Shakespearean 
landscape : — 

*' The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth 
The freckled cowslip, burnet and green clover."^ 

It is very effectual against the Plague, said the old 
Doctor, and against other affections of the heart ; "for 
the leaves being put into wine, especially Claret, yeeld 
unto it not only an excellent relish in drinking, but 
also maketh it much more comfortable to the heart and 
spirits."^ It was, in fact, much the same as bugloss or 
borage in its effects, and its use marks the chief stage in 
the evolution of claret-cup. But the prescription seems 
to have been unknown at Stratford, where, according to 
the Vicar, one came to a tavern, and asked for a pint of 
claret and burnet; and "the vintner, instead thereof, 
went and really burnt itt."^ Ising-glass, again, was 
usually described in the dictionaries as "a kind offish- 
glue used in medicine, and brought from Iceland " ; 
but Mr. Ward was always asking questions about his 
friends' business; and "isinglasse," he writes, "is made 
of the caul or omentum of sturgeon, as Mr. Quiny 
told mee."^. 



V 

ELIZABETH HALL — HER MARRIAGES — HER WILL — SUBSEQUENT 
FORTUNES OF SHAKESPEARE's STRATFORD PROPERTY 

We now return to the story of the elder branch of 
the family. When Judith Quiney's sons died in 1638-9, 
it became necessary to consider the way in which the 
family estates were settled. There might be no diffi- 
culty if Mrs. Nash should have male issue, which 

^ Henry V,, v. 2, 48-9. ^ Venner, op. cit,, p. 199. 

^ Ward's Diary, p. 103. ** Id., p. 303. 



266 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

seemed, indeed, to be unlikely ; but if she had no such 
issue, then after her mother and herself were dead, the 
whole property would be in Mrs. Quiney's power. 
Mrs. Quiney might leave it all to her husband or his 
family ; but in such a matter it might fairly be pre- 
sumed that Shakespeare himself would have wished 
his ** niece Elisabeth" to have the last word. The 
property was accordingly resettled in 1639. The 
entail was barred, and Judith Quiney's reversionary 
estate brought to an end. The property was settled, 
subject to Mrs. Hall's life estate, upon Elizabeth for 
life, and her husband, Thomas Nash, for life, if he 
survived her ; after their deaths it was entailed upon her 
issue by that marriage ; in default, upon her issue by 
any marriage, with a remainder to Mr. Nash and his 
heirs. Should the entail be barred, his rights would 
disappear.^ He seems, however, to have regarded it 
all as his own. They had no child ; and he evidently 
thought it impossible 'that Elizabeth should marry 
again. His will was dated in 1642 ; but he added a 
verbal codicil when he died five years afterwards.^ 
His epitaph, omitting the somewhat trite Latin 
couplets, is to this effect: " Heere resteth the body 
of Thomas Nashe Esq. he mar : Elizabeth, the davg : 
and heire of lohn Halle gent. He died Aprill 4, A. 
1647, aged 53." By his will, as it originally stood, 
he gave certain legacies, and made his wife residuary 
legatee and executrix ; and as to the real property, he 
gave her a life-interest in his house in Chapel Street, 
his meadows at Stratford, and his tithes in Shottery ; 
and he devised the Shakespeare estate in Stratford 
and London, by a very imperfect description, to his 
cousin, Edward Nash, and his heirs. By the transcript 
of his verbal codicil he is shown to have made several 
other bequests, among which were the following : 

^ Deed of 27th May, 1639, •" Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., ii. 108. 
^ See id., 114. 



WILL OF THOMAS NASH 267 

**To his mother Mrs. Hall ;^50 : to Elizabeth Hatha- 
way ;^5o : to Thomas Hathaway ;^50 : to Judith 
Hathaway ;^io : to his Uncle and Aunt Nash, each 
twenty shillings to buy them rings : to his cousin 
Sadler and his wife the same : to his cousin Richard 
Quiney and his wife the same : to his cousin Thomas 
Quiney and his wife (Judith) the same." The altera- 
tions made in the disposition of his real estate show 
that he must have forgotten the main provisions of 
his will. 

Taking the words of the codicil as they appear 
in Malone's Appendix, we find that he devised his 
meadows to his wife and her heirs absolutely "to 
the end that they may hot be severed from her own 
land"; and he further declared "that the inheritance 
of his land given to his cousin, Edward Nash, should be 
by him settled, after his decease, upon his son, Thomas 
Nash, and his heirs. "^ The will was duly proved, but 
Mrs. Nash declined to carry out the provisions that 
purported to deal with Shakespeare's estate. She took 
the precaution of barring the existing entails and 
making a new settlement, of which, among others, 
William Hathaway of Weston-upon-Avon and Thomas 
Hathaway of Stratford were trustees. Its effect was to 
place the whole property at her own disposal, subject to 
her mother's life-estate. These proceedings led to a 
Chancery suit, which Mrs. Nash was able to compromise 
upon favourable terms, her grandfather's estate at 
Stratford being secured to her and her heirs, subject to 
a promise that Edward Nash should have an option of 
purchase at her death. ^ 

On the 5th of June, 1649, Elizabeth Nash was 
married to John Barnard, son of Mr. Baldwin Barnard 
of Abington, near Northampton. The manor of 
Abington had been in the Barnard family for more 

^ Malone, op. cit., ii. 620. 

^ Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., ii. 1 15-16. 



268 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

than two hundred years.^ Mr. John Barnard was a 
widower with a large family. He had married a 
daughter of Sir Clement Edmonds, of Preston, a 
village close to Abington ; ^ and his wife had died in 
1642, leaving four sons and as many daughters. At 
the time of Mr. Barnard's second marriage, three of 
the girls were still in the schoolroom. Within a short 
time after her marriage, Mrs. Barnard was summoned 
to attend her mother in her last illness, which, as we 
have already noticed, ended fatally on the nth of July 
in the same year. On her death, Mr. and Mrs. Barnard 
took possession of New Place and the rest of the 
Stratford property ; and they seem to have remained 
there at least until 1653, when a certain settlement 
made by them is known to have been witnessed by 
persons residing at Stratford. It may have been a 
few months afterwards that they moved to the family 
place at Abington, not, we may suppose, without 
some regret ; for Mr. Ward has preserved a Stratford 
saying that ''Northamptonshire wants three f s ; that 
is, fish, fowl, and fuel."^ Abington Hall was in a 
somewhat dreary situation, fronting upon the road from 
Northampton to Cambridge, which at that time ran 
between great tracts of common-field on either side. 
We hear of no traditions about the house, except a 

^ Bridges, History and Antiquities of Northants, ed. Whalley, 1791, 
i. 401. Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Nicholas Lyllyng, lord of the manor 
temp. Henry V., married Robert Bernard, who became possessed of the 
manor and advowson in the right of his wife. " In this family they re- 
mained for upwards of two hundred years, till purchased of Sir John 
Bernard m 1671, by William Thursiy, Esquire." 

^ Commonly called Preston-Deanery, about 6 miles away, and 4J 
miles south of Northampton, in Wimersley Hundred. See Bridges, 
op. cit., i. 381. 

^ Ward's Diary, p. 133. Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., ii. 117, says: 
" How long after their marriage they occupied New Place does not 
appear, but it is mentioned as in his (John Barnard's) tenure in 1652, 
and, from the names of the witnesses, it may perhaps be assumed that 
Mrs. Barnard was living at Stratford when she executed the deed of 
1653." 



SECOND MARRIAGE OF MRS. NASH 269 

few suggestions preserved by Malone. "If any of 
Shakespeare's manuscripts remained in his grand- 
daughter's custody at the time of her second marriage 
(and some letters^ at least, she surely must have had), 
they probably were then removed to the house of her 
new husband at Abington." This does not allow for 
their residence at Stratford, but the point does not 
very much affect his argument. "Sir Hugh Clopton, 
who was born two years after her death, mentioned to 
Mr. Macklin, in the year 1742, an old tradition that 
she had carried away with her from Stratford many of 
her grandfather's papers." Mr. Barnard was created 
a Baronet by King Charles II. on the 25th of 
November, 1661, though he is generally called "Sir 
John Barnard, knight." As to the papers, Malone 
continued, "on the death of Sir John Barnard they 
must have fallen into the hands of Mr. Edward Bagley, 
Lady Barnard's executor ; and if any descendant of 
that gentleman be now living, in his custody they 
probably remain."^ 

Most of Sir John Barnard's children died in his life- 
time without living issue. The survivors were three of 
his daughters — Elizabeth, wife of Henry Gilbert of 
Locko in Derbyshire ; Mary, widow of Thomas Higgs 
of Colesborne, Gloucestershire ; and Eleanor, wife of 
Samuel Cotton of Henwick in the county of Bedford.^ 
Elizabeth Barnard died at Abington Hall about the 
middle of February, 1669-70. The entry in the register 
is as follows: "Madam Elizabeth Bernard, wife of 
Sir John Bernard kt., was buried 17*^ Febr., 1669." 
It is believed that she and her husband were both laid 
in a vault under the chancel of the parish church at 
Abington, though their remains have since been re- 
moved. A tombstone still bears a pompous epitaph in 
memory of Sir John. " Here rest the remains," as we 
may translate it, "of a man of most noble race, illustrious 

1 Malone, op. cit., ii. 623, note. ^ Ibid., 625, note. 



270 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

through his father, grandfather, great - grandfather, 
great-great-grandfather, and other ancestors having 
been lords of this town of Abington for more than 200 
years : he yielded to Fate in the 69th year of his age, 
on the 5th day before the Nones of March in the year 
of the Nativity 1673." The date in modern parlance 
was the 3rd of March, 1673-4. Lady Barnard's hus- 
band, it was complained, did not show his respect for 
her memory by a monument or inscription of any 
kind: "he seems not to have been sensible of the 
honourable alliance he had made." "Shakespeare's 
granddaughter," said Malone, with a somewhat pathetic 
incongruity, "would not, at this day, go to her grave 
without a memorial."^ It seems, however, that Sir 
John sold the property very soon after his wife's death. 
Dame Elizabeth's will was dated the 29th of January, 
1669-70, and was proved in London "at Exeter House 
in the Strand " on the 4th of March following.^ Its 
effect was as follows, omitting the formal introduction. 
Whereas by a settlement made in 1653 the estate at 
New Place and the common-field land was given upon 
trust for sale, after the deaths of Sir John and Dame 
Elizabeth Barnard, the surviving trustee being Henry 
Smith of Stratford, now it was directed that such sale 
was to take place as speedily as possible after Sir John's 
decease, the testatrix adding, "that my loving cousin 
Edward Nash, esq. shall have the first offer or refusall 
thereof according to my promise formerly made to 
him." Some of the legacies are worth mentioning. 
An annuity of ;^5, to be redeemed by a capital sum of 
^^"40 in certain events, was given to Judith Hathaway, 
one of the daughters of Lady Barnard's kinsman, 
Thomas Hathaway, late of Stratford, and then de- 
ceased ; a sum of ^^50 was secured to Mrs. Joan Kent, 
wife of Edward Kent, another daughter of Thomas 

^ Ibid., 624, note. 

'^ Copy in Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit, ii. 62-3. 



LADY BARNARD'S WILL 271 

Hathaway, with provisions in certain events for paying 
it to her son Edward ; another sum of ^^30 was given 
to the child Edward Kent ''towards putting him out 
as an apprentice " ; the sum of ^^40 apiece was given 
to Rose, Elizabeth, and Susanna, three other of the 
daughters of Thomas Hathaway. The trustee was to 
have ;^5 for his pains, and all the rest of the money 
produced by the sale was to go to Lady Barnard's 
loving kinsman, Mr. Edward Bagley, citizen of London, 
who was appointed executor. If Mr. Nash did not 
accept the option of purchase, the trustee was to make 
the same offer to Mr. Bagley. The houses in Henley 
Street were left to the family of the Harts, the inn and 
the house next adjoining, with the barn thereto belong- 
ing, being entailed upon Thomas Hart and the heirs of 
his body, and in default of such issue, upon his brother 
George for a similar estate. 

The clause as to the occupation of New Place was 
as follows: "That the executors or administrators of 
my said husband Sir John Barnard shall have and 
enjoy the use and benefit of my said house in Stratford 
called the New Place, with the orchard, garden, &c., 
for and during the space of six months next after the 
decease of him the said Sir John Barnard." Sir John 
died intestate, and administration of his effects was 
granted on the 7th of November, 1674, to Mr. Gilbert, 
Mrs. Higgs, and Mrs. Cotton. "I know not," said 
Malone, "whether any descendant of these be now 
living : but if that should be the case, among their 
papers may probably be found some fragment or other 
relating to Shakespeare. ^ Neither Mr. Nash nor Mr. 
Bagley appears to have exercised the option of pur- 
chase given by the will ; and the property was accord- 
ingly sold by the trustee in 1675 to Sir Edward Walker 
of Clopton. He was a member of an ancient family of 
Walkers, long settled at Nether Stowey in Somerset, 

^ Malone, n.s. 



272 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

where they held the old castle and a red-deer park, 
with other property in various parts of the county. 
Sir Edward gave the Shakespeare estate to his daugh- 
ter Barbara, wife of Sir John Clopton, with remainder 
after death to her son Edward ; but the settlement was 
altered after Sir Edward Walker's death in 1677. Sir 
John Clopton, by some family arrangement, obtained 
the complete power of disposal ; and when his son 
Hugh was engaged to Miss Millward in 1702, he chose 
to pull down the old mansion, and to rebuild it on a 
different plan, in order to provide a good modern house 
for the bride. ^ 

Mr. Ward seems to have felt much interest in the 
earlier changes of ownership, and he has preserved 
several stories about the new purchaser and his family. 
" Sir Edward Walker," he says, '' was secretarie to the 
Earl of Arundel, when hee went embassador to the 
Emperor about restitution of the palatinate. Hee was 
secretarie to the same Earl when hee was general of the 
King's forces against the Scots. "^ Of the employ- 
ment of secretaries upon such missions it was said : 
*' As in a chimney the brazen andirons stand for state, 
while the dogs do the service, so in embassies it was 
usual formerly to have a Civilian employed with a 
Lord, the one for state, and the other for transactions." 
Mr. Ward adds that the same gentleman, by the King's 
command, "wrote the actions of the warre in 1644": 
" I saw itt (the book), and King Charles the First his 
correcting of itt, with his owne hand-writing ; for 
Sir Edward's maner was to bring itt to the King every 
Saturday, after diner, and then the King putt out and 
putt in, with his owne hand, what hee pleased."^ The 
work was first published under the title of Iter Caro- 
linum, and appeared in 1705 as Historical Discourses 

^ Halliwell-Phillipps, op. ciL, ii. 119. The subsequent history of New 
Place is carefully traced, ibid., 120-135. 
2 Ward's Diary, p. 180, ^ Ibid, 



SIR EDWARD WALKER OF CLOPTON 273 

in folio, with a large print of Charles I. and of the 
author writing on a drum.^ Its author was regarded 
as being Secretary of State for War. According to 
Symonds' Diary he was knighted by the King at his 
winter-quarters in Oxford on Sunday, the 9th of Feb- 
ruary, 1644-5 ; 2 and he was soon afterwards appointed 
Garter King at Arms. Returning to Ward's conver- 
sations, we learn how the Queen Mother of France died 
at "Agrippina," or Cologne, in 1642, and her son 
Louis XIII. soon afterwards, " for whom King Charles 
mourned in Oxford in purple, which is prince's mourn- 
ing."^ "Sir Edward Walker went to the King im- 
mediately after King Charles the First had his head 
cut off; hee carried but forty pound along with him, 
and one twenty pound, which hee received from 
England in all the twelve years. Hee sales the Duke 
of Ormond and my Lord Chancellor kept but two men 
apeece when they were beyond sea with the King."'' 
Lady Clopton talked about foreign convents, and how 
the nuns had "two yeers' time to make trial," even 
though they wore the habits of their order in the 
second twelvemonth. ^ Her father declaimed against 
the French noblemen, who only took up religion for 
fashion's sake,^ but praised the Dutch for their con- 
tinual charity : "In Holland, every Sunday, there is a 
collection in their churches for the poor, and in such 
a church as ours att Stratford, five or ten pounds may 
bee gatherd ; every one gives something."'^ "He 
told mee hee carried the garter to the Marquis of Bran- 
denburg, and had 125 pound for itt ; that hee had a 
stately palace at Berline ; that hee is not such a drinker 
as people say. Sir Edward said hee dined with him, 

^ See description in Lowndes, Bibliog. Manual, 1864, v. p. 2,811. 
^ Symonds' Diary, ed. C. E. Long, 1859, p. 162. 
•^ Ward's Z>/arj', p. 177. ^ Id., p. 137. 

^ Id., p. 130. ^ Id., p. 131. 

" Id., p. 151. He adds: "Wee in Engfland give only at the Sacra- 
ment." 



274 SHAKESPEARE'S DESCENDANTS 

and protested that hee had risen from the table 
thirstie."^ Something, too, was said about the Great 
Fire, which, according to the vicar, began " in Pudding 
Lane, in one Mr. Farmer's house " ; but the name was 
really *'Farryner," as it appears in the depositions.^ 
"Almanack-makers doe bring their almanacks to 
Roger le Estrange, and hee licenses them. Sir Edward 
Walker told mee hee askt him, and hee confest that 
most of them did foretel the fire of London last year, 
but hee caused itt to bee put out ! " ^ 

1 Id., p. 137. 

■^ S^ee hX\e.n,Hist, and Ant. of Lojidofi, 1827, i. 403. 

^ Ward's Diary, p. 94. 




ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 
IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 



ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 
IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 

L HOWELL'S LETTERS 



HOWELL S RELATIONS WITH BEN JONSON HIS LINES ON DAVIES 

WELSH GRAMMAR — LONG MELFORD IN SHAKESPEARE AND IN 
HOWELL's LETTERS 

IN our examination of various anecdotes preserved 
by those who had special facilities for knowing 
about Shakespeare and his friends, we shall begin with 
James Howell, who must still be considered the prince 
of letter-writers in his age, though many attempts have 
been made from time to time to discredit his accuracy 
in particular statements. He may fairly be counted 
among the poet's contemporaries, since he was born in 
1594; ^^^ ^^ should also be observed that he had left 
Oxford, and was well known in London society for 
some time before Shakespeare's death. ^ He was a 
loving "son and servitor" to Ben Jonson, with whom 
he kept up a delightful correspondence, and on whose 



^ Jesus College, Oxford, b.a. , 17th December, 1613. 
Ho-EliancE — The Familiar Letters of James Howell . . 
Joseph Jacobs, 1892, introduction, pp, xxvi.-xxviii. 

277 



See EpistolcE 
edited . . by 



278 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

death he composed a manly decastich of verse.^ We 
quote a few sentences from one or two of these letters : 
" Fa[ther] Ben, ... I thank you for the last regalo 
you gave me at your Musoewm, and for the good com- 
pany. I heard you censured lately at Court, that you 
have lighted too foul upon Sir Inigo, and that you 
write with a Porcupine's quill dipt in too much gall. 
Excuse me that I am so free with you ; it is because 
I am, in no common way of Friendship — Yours, J.H."^ 
In a similar strain he writes once more: ''The Fangs 
of a Bear, and the Tusks of a wild Boar, do not bite 
worse, and make deeper gashes, than a Goose-quill, 
sometimes . . . Your quill hath prov'd so to Mr. 
Jones ; but the Pen wherewith you have so gash'd him, 
it seems, was made rather of a Porcupine than a 
Goose-quill, it is so keen and firm."^ 

In a letter addressed "to my Father Mr. Ben. 
Johnson," he criticised "the strong sinewy labours" 
that had produced such strenuous lines. We omit the 
Latin quotations with which the letters were larded 
according to the taste of the age. "There's no great 
Wit without some mixture of madness ; so saith the 
Philosopher : Nor was he a fool who answer'd . . . 
nor small wit without some allay of foolishness. 
Touching the first, it is verify 'd in you, for I find that 
you have been oftentimes mad ; you were mad when 
you writ your Fox, and madder when you writ your 
Alchymist ; you were mad when you writ Catilin, and 
stark mad when you writ Sejanus ; but when you writ 
your Epigrams, and the Magnetick Lady, you were not 
so mad : Insomuch that I perceive there be degrees of 
madness in you. Excuse me that I am so free with 

^ upon the Poet of his Time, Benjamin Jonson, his honoured Friend 
and Father, being- the twelfth elegy in Jonsonus Virbius. (Works of 
Jonson, ed. Gifford, 183S, p. 796.) 

'^ Epp. Ho-EL, U.S., p. 324 (bk. i. § 6, let. 20, dated Westm[mster], 
3 of May 1635). 

^ Id., p. 376 (bk. ii. let. 2 : Westm., zJuly 1635). 



HOWELL AND BEN JONSON 279 

you. The madness I mean is that divine Fury, that 
heating and heightning spirit which Ovid speaks of 
. . . I cannot yet light upon Dr. Davies's Welsh 
Grammar, before Christmas I am promis'd one."^ 
When the book arrived, Howell thought it better than 
any of the '' Accidences" used for teaching Irish and 
Basque ; he makes no mention of the famous Grammar 
published by Griffith Roberts at Milan, in 1567. 
^^ Father Ben, you desir'd me lately to procure you 
Dr. Davies's Welsh Grammar, to add to those many 
you have ; I have lighted upon one at last, and I am 
glad I have it in so seasonable a time that it may serve 
for a New-year's-gift, in which quality I send it 
you : . . . 

" ' 'Twas a tough task, believe it, thus to tame 
A wild and wealthy Language, and to frame 
Grammatic toils to curb her, so that she 
Now speaks by Rules, and sings by Prosody : 
Such is the strength of Art rough things to shape, 
And of rude Commons rich Inclosures make.' "^ 

In a letter to "Sir Tho. Hawk "[ins] he tells us of 
a meeting with his "Father" which has a peculiar 
interest in connection with the current story about the 
causes of Shakespeare's death. " I was invited yester- 
night to a solemn Supper, by B.J., where you were 
deeply remember'd ; there was good company, excellent 
cheer, choice wines, and jovial welcome : One thing 
intervened, which almost spoil'd the relish of the rest, 
that B. began to engross all the discourse, to vapour 
extremely of himself, and, by vilifying others, to 
magnify his own Muse. T. Ca.^ buzz'd me in the ear, 
that tho' Ben. had barrell'd up a great deal of know- 

^ Id., p. 267 (i, §5, let, 16; Westm.y 2^ June 1629). 

^ Id., p. 276 (i. § 5, let. 26 : Cal. Apr. 1629). The lines proclaiming- 
Davies' superiority to the Irish and " Bascuence " Accidences, occur in 
the middle of this effusion. 

^ i.e. Thomas Carew. See Carew's Poems, ed. Vincent, 1899, introd. 
pp. xxiv.-xxv. 



28o ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

ledge, yet it seems he had not read the Ethiques, which, 
among other precepts of Morality, forbid self-commen- 
dation. . . . But for my part, I am content to dispense 
with this Roman infirmity of B.^ now that time hath 
snowed upon his pericranium.''^'^ 

Howell's reference to the "rude commons" and 
"rich inclosures," in the poem on Davies' Grammar 
above cited, may very well have been suggested by 
a Shakespearean instance. It will be remembered that 
in the second part of Henry VI. a certain petition is 
presented to the Lord Protector. 

'■^ Suf, What's yours ? What's here? {Reads.) 'Against 
the Duke of Suffolk, for enclosing the commons of Melford.' 
How now, sir knave ! 

'■^Petitioner. Alas, sir, I am but a poor petitioner of our 
whole township. "2 

We do not know what the circumstances may have 
been to which the petition related ; but Shakespeare 
may have been familiar with the old local history 
through the Cloptons, some of the family having long 
been established at Melford and others at Cockfield, in 
Suffolk. Mr. Ward notes in his Diary that Walter 
Clopton became owner of the Manor of Cockfield, in 
Essex, (j/c), "and assumed the name of itt."^ Long 

^ Epp. Ho-El, pp. 403-4 (ii. let. 13 : Westm., 5 Apr. 1636). 

"^ 2 Henry VI., 1. 3, 23-7. 

^ Diary of the Rev. John Ward, ed. C. Severn, 1839, p. 186. The 
church of the Holy Trinity, Long- Melford, was rebuilt by Sir William 
Clopton (d. 1446), of Kentwell Hall, and other rich laymen of the parish. 
William's son John (d. 1497) continued his father's work, and added the 
beautiful and unique Lady Chapel at the east end of the building. The 
ornamental "flushwork" of the parapets of the Lady Chapel, south side 
of the church, and south porch, takes the form of inscriptions asking 
prayers for the benefactors of the church. Among these are the 
Cloptons and their wives, and a butler in their family. In the north 
aisle of the choir is the altar-tomb, with effigy, of the elder Clopton, 
hard by which are the handsome brasses of his two wives, and 
of other members of the family. East of William Clopton's tomb, and 
north of the chancel, is the mortuary chapel of the Cloptons, containing 
some later monuments and incised slabs ; it is separated by a wall, in 



HOWELL AT LONG MELFORD 281 

Melford was described as "one of the biggest towns 
in England that is not a market-town." "The Lady 
Rivers," says Cox in his history of the county, "had 
a house in this town in the time of the rebellion." 
Fuller says it was the first-fruits of plundering in 
England, and Floyd adds that she lost the value of 
;^20,ooo. The house had belonged to Sir Thomas 
Savage, created Lord Savage in 1626 ; he was suc- 
ceeded in 1635 by his son Thomas, the second Lord, 
who inherited the Earldom of Rivers four years after- 
wards. Howell was employed for a short time as 
tutor in the family, and he has left a very interesting 
description of the house as it stood in its perfection, 
before it became the first-fruits of violence. He says 
that he never saw a great mansion so neatly kept: "the 
Kitchen and . . . other Offices of noise and drudgery 
are at the fag-end ; there's a Back-gate for the Beggars 
and the meaner sort of Swains to come in at." The 
gardens were full of "costly choice flowers," and fruits 
of many kinds: "here you have your Bon Christian 
Pear and Bergamot in perfection, your Mitscadell 
Grapes in such plenty, that there are some Bottles 
of Wine sent every year to the King " ; and Mr. 
Daniel, a worthy neighbour, made "good store in his 
Vintage." The park had once belonged to the Abbot 
of Bury St. Edmund's, and had probably been inclosed 
out of the commons. The park, "for a chearful rising 

which is a small lychnoscope, from the aisle of which it is the termina- 
tion. Between it and the High Altar is the tomb of Sir John Clopton 
under a very depressed og-ee arch : it has no effigy, and is supposed to 
have served the purpose of an Easter sepulchre. The arms of Clop- 
ton occur in the stained glass at the west end of the aisles. Sir John 
Clopton was a Lancastrian, and was implicated in the charge for which 
John, twelfth earl of Oxford, and his son Aubrey, were executed in 1462. 
Kentwell Hall, the residence of the Cloptons, is about a quarter of a 
mile north-west of the church ; Melford Hall, where Howell lived for 
a time, is about the same distance south-east. See the late Sir William 
Parker's History of Long Melford, 1 873 ; Murray's Handbook to the Eastern 
Counties, 1892, pp. 125-6. 



282 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

Ground, for Groves and Browsings for the Deer, for 
rivulets of Water, may compare with any for its high- 
ness in the whole Land ; it is opposite to the front of 
the great House, whence from the Gallery one may see 
much of the Game when they are a-hunting."^ It 
is somewhat singular that when the Abbey was dis- 
solved, the profits of the park were valued at no more 
than ten shillings a year. 

II 

HOWELL ON TRADE AND COMMERCE — WINES AND ALES 

Howell is one of the chief authorities on the trade 
and commerce of his time. We can learn from him, 
for example, the meaning of all the Shakespearean 
references to small ale and good double beer, to sack 
and sherris and cups of Canary. Of the first he says 
jestingly : " In this Island the old drink was Ale, . . . 
But since Beer hath hopp'd in among us. Ale is 
thought to be much adulterated, and nothing so good 
as Sir /o/in Oldcastle and Smug the Smith was us'd to 
drink." 2 He is referring to his visits to the theatre on 
Bank-side, for he writes to Mr. Caldwall from York, 
''I am the same to you this side Trent, as I was the 
last time we cross'd the Thames together to see Smug 
the Smith, and so back to the Still-yard.''^ When he 
had been ill in Paris, he tells his father on another 
occasion, the doctors and surgeons who attended him 
came to pay him a visit on his recovery, and among 
other things, they began talking about wine ; *' and so 

^ Epp. Ho-EL, pp. 106-7 ('• § 2, let. 8: ^^ From the Lord Savage's 
House in Long-Melford," 20 3fay 1619. The words "the Lord Savage" 
show that Howell re-dated the letter for publication, as they could not 
have been written in 16 19. 

^ Id., p. 451 (ii. let. 54: Westm., 17 Oct. 1634). 

^ Id., p. 247 (i. § 5, let. I : York, 13 July 1627). Smug the Smith is 
here used as the name of a character in The Merry Devil of Ed?nonton. 
John Taylor, Pennyles Pilgrimage, uses the phrase "a mad smuggy 
smith" (ed. Hindley, 1872, p. 11). 



ALE AND BEER 283 

by degrees they fell upon other beverages ; and one 
Doctor in the company who had been in England, told 
me that we have a Drink in England call'd Ale, which 
he thought was the wholsomest liquor ... for while 
the Englishmen drank only Ale, they were strong, 
brawny, able Men, and could draw an arrow an ell 
long ; but when they fell to wine and beer, they are 
found to be much impair'd in their strength and age : 
so the Ale bore away the bell among the Doctors." ^ 

In Low Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, etc., 
he tells us, beer was almost the universal drink.^ We 
may note, however, that the Dutch were wine-drinkers, 
the Rhine-wines being the sole staple of the town of 
Dort ; Middelburg was the centre of the trade in 
French and Spanish wines. ^ We might make another 
exception for the Court at Elsinore, where the King 
the "swaggering up-spring" reeled, and drained down 
huge cups of Rhenish.* "In the Duke of Saxe's 
Country there is Beer as yellow as Gold, made of 
Wheat ";^ and Holinshed tells us that "yellow as a 
gold noble " was a phrase of the English topers.^ 
This Saxon beer, it should be observed, was the same 
as the Brunswick mum, for which a brewery was at 
one time set up in Stratford ; the promoters hoped that 
their town would become the head of the mum-trade, 
and might even be known as " New Brunswick." The 
Vicar of Stratford complains in his Diary that "we 
have utterly lost what was the thing that preserved 
beer so long, before hops were found out in England." ^ 
Sir Hugh Piatt of Lincoln's Inn thought that it might 
have been done by using wormwood, centaury, hepatic 

^ Epp. Ho-El., pp. 136-7 (i. § 2, let. 21, from Paris, 10 Dec. 1622). 
^ Id. , p. 45 1 , as note. 

^ Id., pp. 126-7 (•• § 2, let. 15 : Antwerp, i May 1622). 
■* Hamlet, i. 4, 9-10. ^ Epp. Ho-El., p. 451, as note. 

^ Holinshed, The Description of England, chap. vi. , in Chronicles, ed. 
Hooker, 1586, vol. i. p. 170. 
"^ Ward's Diary, u.s. 



284 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

aloes, or artichoke-leaves/ and it is well known that ivy- 
was a common substitute when hops were prohibited 
by Henry VIII. According to Holinshed it was only 
the nobility that drank beer of "two years' tunning" ; 
it was often brewed in the spring, and was then known 
as March-beer ; and in an ordinary household it was 
usually about a month old, " ech one coveting to have 
the same stale as he may, so that it be not sowre."^ 
It was probably from his Chronicle that Shakespeare 
took the phrase "pink eyne " in the song which the 
boy sang on Pompey's galley.^ Some have thought 
that he referred to colour, since "pink" in the old 
Dictionaries is explained as "a kind of yellow used in 
painting." The verb "to pink" signified winking, 
and people "with eyes like pigs" were often called 
pink-eyed.^ Pliny had said that a man with both 
eyes very small would be nicknamed Ocella, and in 
Holland's version this appears as "Also them that 
were pinke-eied and had verie small eies, they tearmed 
OcellcB.^^^ Holinshed, however, shows us that Bacchus 
was accused in the song of a tipsy blinking ; for in his 
sketch of the pot-knights he makes them afraid to stir 
from the alehouse-bench, where they sit half-asleep, 
"still pinking with their narrow eyes," until the fume 
of their adversary passes away.*^ We should add a 
few words about wine. Shakespeare barely refers to 
claret and other "small red wines" ; it is sufficient to 
notice that the Scotch had the preference and pick of 
the market at Bordeaux,^ and that Portugal as yet pro- 
duced nothing worth bringing to England.^ The best 

1 Sir Hugh Piatt, The Jewell House of Art and Nature, 1594, pp. 15-19, 
under heading "How to brew good and wholsom Beere without anie 
Hoppes at all." 

^ Holinshed, op. cit., i. p. 167. ^ Ajttony and Cleopatra, ii. 7, 121. 

■* See instances in Nares' Glossary, s.v, 

s Pliny, Nat. Hist., tr. Holland, 1601, bk. xi. ch. 37. (vol. i. p. 335 E.) 

" Holinshed, op. cit., i. 170. ^ Epp. Ho-El., p. 456, as note. 

8 Id., p. 455. 



FOREIGN WINES 285 

Hock, said Howell, came from Bacharach, or "Bach- 
rag" as he called it,^ and the worst never saw the 
Rhine at all, but was "stummed up" out of a hard 
green wine from Rochelle.^ The Rhenish grape was 
"the father of Canary." From Bacharach came the 
first stock of vines for the island of Grand Canary. 
"I think there's more Canary brought into England 
than to all the World besides. I think also there is a 
hundred times more drunk under the name of Canary 
Wine than is brought in ; for Sherries and Malagas 
well mingled pass for Canaries in most Taverns, more 
often than Canary itself."^ It was even said that with 
a spoonful of Spirit of Clary, that could be bought of 
any apothecary, a bottle of cider might be made to 
resemble Canary so nearly that an experienced palate 
could not tell the difference. The best account of 
Sack is to be found in Dr. Venner's Via Recta ad Vitam 
longam, of which editions were issued in 1638 and 
1650.* " Some affect," he says, "to drink with sugar, 
and some without, as is best pleasing to their palates." 
On this matter, he concluded, everyone must be his 
own director, according to his state of health; "but 
what I have spoken of mixing Sugar with Sack, must 
be understood of Sherrie Sack, for to mix Sugar with 
other wines, that in a common appellation are called 
Sack, and are sweeter in taste, makes it unpleasant to 
the palat." Malaga Sack, he said, was neither pleasant 
nor wholesome, being nauseous and fulsomely sweet. 
" Canarie-wine ... is also termed a Sack ... it is 
not so white in colour as Sherrie Sack, nor so thinne 
in substance."^ The truest kind of Sack was exported 

1 Id., p. 457. 

' Id., p. 456 : " This is called stooming of Wines." Stum = strong new 
wine. See Nares, s.v. ^ Id., pp. 457-8. 

^ The earliest edition belongs to 1620. The edition of 1650 contains 
many additions. Both the 1638 and 1650 volumes contain, as an 
appendix, The Bathes of Bathe and the treatise on tobacco-taking. 

^ Venner, u.s., ed. 1650, pp. 33-4. 



286 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

from Santa Cruz in the isle of Palma ; it was a thin, 
dry wine of a very pale colour. This was Ben Jonson's 
favourite, according to a saying ascribed to him : 
" I laid the plot of my Volpone, and wrote most of it, 
after a present of ten dozen of Palm Sack from my 
very good Lord."^ We get an idea about these wines 
from Venner's use of sweet Muscadel as a standard. 
Muscadel was, in his opinion, exactly equal to sweet 
Malmsey or Malvaria ; and Bastard was somewhat like 
Muscadel, "and may also instead thereof be used." ^ We 
should remember, however, that the sugared Sherries, 
and all the quarts and gallons of Sack which went to 
Falstaff's reckonings were in reality not stronger than 
negus. Howell says of these white wines in general, 
that ''when Sacks and Canaries were brought in first 
among us, they were us'd to be drank in Aqua vitce 
measures," and were regarded as liqueurs for old 
people and invalids ; " but now they go down every 
one's throat, both young and old, like milk."^ 



Ill 

HOWELL AT VENICE— ILLUSTRATIONS OF "THE TEMPEST," 
** OTHELLO," ETC, 

We find several passages which throw some light 
upon allusions in The Tempest to King Alonso "upon 
the Mediterranean flote, bound sadly home for Naples,"^ 
and the foul witch, Sycorax, who for "sorceries terrible" 
was banished from Argier : "for one thing she did, 
they would not take her life."^ "I know," writes 

^ Aubrey, Brief Lives, ii. 12, says : " Canarie was his beloved liquour." 

^ Venner, u.s. 

^ Epp. Ho-EL, p. 458, as note. His phrase is: " 'Twas held fit only 
for those to drink of them who were us'd to carry their legs in their 
hands, their eyes upo?i their noses, and an Ahnanack in their bones." 

* Tempest, i. 2, 234-5. ° Ibid., 263-7. 



HOWELL AT ALGIERS 287 

Howell, "the Lightness and Nimbleness of ^/^z'er ships; 
when I liv'd lately in Alicant and other places upon 
the Mediterranean^ we should every Week hear some 
of them chas'd, but very seldom taken ; for a great 
Ship following one of them, may be said to be as a 
Mastiff Dog running after a Hare."^ When the light 
pirate-ship was in chase of a great merchant-man 
another figure was required ; and in Sandys' Travels 
we accordingly read of "a little frigot" venturing "on 
an Argosie," which ran ashore before the pursuer, as if 
a whale should fly from a dolphin.^ Howell is writing 
to his friend. Captain Thomas Porter, upon his return 
from an attempt upon the galleys in Algiers Roads, 
which had failed through the spells of the Demon and 
his Hadjis and Marabouts ; "it was one of the bravest 
Enterprizes, and had prov'd such a glorious Exploit 
that no Story could have parallel'd ; but it seems their 
Hoggies, Magicians^ and Maribots were tampering 
with the ill Spirits of the Air all the while, which 
brought down such a still Cataract of Rain-waters 
suddenly upon you, to hinder the working of your 
Fire-works ; such a Disaster the Story tells us, befell 
Charles the Emperor, but far worse than yours, for he 
lost Ships and multitudes of Men, who were made 
Slaves, but you came off with loss of eight Men only, 
and Algier is anotherghess thing now than she was 
then, being I believe an hundred degrees stronger by 
Land and Sea."^ 

When Howell was quite a young man, he was sent to 
Venice to learn the secrets of glass-making. William 
Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, in partnership with Sir 
Robert Mansell and a few others, had obtained a 
monopoly for making glass with pit-coal at Swansea, 
"to save those huge Proportions of Wood which were 

1 Epp. Ho-El., p. no (i., § 2, let. ii : St. Osith, Dec. 1622). 
^ Sandys' Relation of a Jo^irney, etc., 1615, p. 2. 
^ Epp. Ho-El., as note i. 



288 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

consumed formerly in the Glass Furnaces : And this 
Business," he continues, "being of that nature, that 
the Workmen are to had from Italy, and the chief 
Materials from Spain, France, and other foreign 
Countries ; there is need of an Agent abroad for this 
Use." ^ At Alicante, on his way to Venice, he embarked 
with a " lusty Dutchman " who despised the Algerines. 
There had been a sad misfortune with the pirates a 
short time before : "had I come time enough to have 
taken the Opportunity, I might have been made either 
Food for Haddocks, or turn'd to Cinders, or have 
been by this time a Slave in the Bannier at Algier, 
or tugging at a Oar." They arrived quite safely at 
Malamocco, but were nearly forty days at sea. "We 
passed by Majorca and Minorca ... by some Ports 
of Barhary, by Sardinia, Corsica, and all the Islands 
of the Mediterranean! Sea. We were at the Mouth 
of Tyber, and thence fetch'd our Course for Sicily ; we 
pass'd by those sulphureous fiery Islands, Mongihel and 
Stronibolo, and about the Dawn of the Day we shot 
thro' Scylla and Charyhdis, and so into the Phare of 
Messina; thence we touch'd upon some of the Greek 
Islands, and so came to our first intended Course, into 
the Venetian Gitlph, and are now here at Malamocco.'''' "^ 
This is like the voyage from Naples to Tunis, where 
Queen Claribel dwelt ten leagues beyond man's life : — 

" She that from Naples 
Can have no note, unless the sun were post — 
The man i' th' moon's too slow — till new-born chins 
Be rough and razorable."^ 

"Now," says our traveller, "we are in the Adrian 
Sea, in the Mouth whereof Venice stands, like a gold 
Ring in a Bear's Muzzle."^ In considering Shake- 

^ Id., p. 20 (i. § I, let. 2 : Broad Street, Londo7i, 1 March 161 8). 
^ Id., p. 62 (i. § I, let. 26 : Malamocco, 30 April 1621). 
^ TeTnpest, ii. i, 247-50. 

* Epp. Ho-El., p. 63 (i. \\y let. 27 : '■'•From on Shipboard before Venice," 
5 May 162 1). 



HOWELL AT VENICE 289 

speare's references to Venice, it must always be remem- 
bered that the republic was the mistress of a vast 
dominion. Mr. Rawdon Brown has some apposite 
remarks on this point. We find an account of a series 
of letters written from London by the Venetian Am- 
bassadors in Shakespeare's time in his Catalogue of 
Manuscripts preserved among the Venetian State 
Papers. In one of the letters, dated the i8th of 
February, 1610, Arabella Stuart is mentioned as com- 
plaining that certain comici publici intended to bring 
her into a play. Mr. Rawdon Brown takes these for 
the King's players, "who, by turning Arabella into 
ridicule, expected to please their chief patron." Lady 
Braybrooke, he adds, spoke of "Venetian Players" 
acting in London in 1608, and also of Lord Suffolk's 
players in 1610. "I wonder whether either of these 
two companies had any hand in bringing Arabella 
Stuart on the stage, and I should also like to know 
whether the fact of there having been ' Venice Players ' 
in England in Shakespeare's time had been noted by 
his commentators, when alluding to the Venetian origin 
of so many of his plays ; for we must consider as 
Venetian not merely scenes actually laid in Venice, but 
also all such as relate to the Signory's dependencies, 
whether on the mainland as at Padua and Verona, or 
in Cyprus, or in Dalmatia." With reference to this 
point we should consult Howell's letter to Sir James 
Crofts and the Survey of the Signorie of Venice^ 
which he published as a separate work in 165 1. " Tho' 
this City be thus hem'd in with the Sea, yet she spreads 
her Wings far and wide upon the Shore ; she hath in 
Lomhardy six considerable Towns, Padua, Verona, 
Vicenza, Brescia, Crema, and Bergamo: she hath in 
the Marquisat, Bassan and Castelfranco ; she hath 
all Friuli and Istria; she commands the Shores of 
Dalmatia and Sclavonia; she keeps under the Power 
of St. Mark the Islands of Corfu (anciently Corcyra), 



290 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

Cephalonia, Zant, Cerigo, Lucerigo, and Candy. ^^"^ In 
1488 she had received the kingdom of Cyprus from 
"Kate the Queen," ^ otherwise "La Regina Caterina 
Cornaro Lusignana," and had only lost it in 1571 after 
a desperate struggle with the " Ottomites." "It was 
quite rent from her by the Turk : which made that 
high-spirited Bassa, being taken Prisoner at the Battle 
of Lepanto, where the Grand Signior lost above 200 
Gallies, to say, That that Defeat to his great Master was 
but like the shaving of his Beard, or the paring of his 
Nails ; but the taking of Cyprus was like the cutting off 
of a Limb, which will never grow again. This mighty 
Potentate being so near a Neighbour to her, she is 
forced to comply with him, and give him an annual 
Present in Gold.''^ 

We see the misfortune coming, even when Othello 
brings Cyprus comfort and assistance. " The desperate 
tempest hath so bang'd the Turks, that their design- 
ment halts " ; "^ but still the Turk with a most mighty 
preparation makes for Cyprus. All that the Venetians 
can do is to bear a brave heart, and so steal something 
from the thief : 

" So let the Turk of Cyprus us beguile ; 
We lose it not, so long as we can smile. 
He bears the sentence well that nothing bears 
But the free comfort which from thence he hears, 
But he bears both the sentence and the sorrow 
That, to pay grief, must of poor patience borrow."^ 

Shakespeare evidently knew as much about Venice 
as many a traveller who had "swam in a gondola." To 
take another point from Othello, we may note that the 
ship in which Cassio sailed to Cyprus is described as "a 
Veronesa " ; ^ and if one looks at the list of ships that 

^ Epp. Ho-EL, p. 77 (i. § I, let. 35: Ven., i Aug. 162 1). 

^ See R. Browning-, Pippa Passes. 

3 Epp. Ho-EL, u.'s. * Othello, ii. i, 21-2. 

^ Id., i. 3, 210-15. ^ Id., ii. I, 26. 



VENICE 291 

took part in the battle of Lepanto, it will be seen at 
once that the inland towns were credited with the ships 
built at their expense, such as the '' Royalty " of Padua, 
the ''Alessandrica" of Bergamo, and the " Tower " and 
'* Sea-man" of Vicenza. It is in one of the earliest 
plays that the proverb is quoted which said that ^'the 
eye is the best judge of Venice," or ''Who sees not 
Venice, loves her not." Howell adds the line which 
the young "Italianate signors" were apt to leave out: — 

" Venetia, Venetia, chinon te vede non te Pregia, 
Ma chi f ha troppo veduto te Dispreggia " — 

"Venice, Venice, woweThee tmseen can prise ; 
Who hath seen [thee] too tnuch 'mill Thee despise. " 

Such was the "common Saying that is used of this 
dainty City of Venice.''''^ Howell takes the liberty 
of borrowing the celebrated metaphors of the "pool" 
and the "girdle" in Cyvibeline. "You shall find 
us," laughed Prince Cloten, "in our salt-water girdle : 
if you beat us out of it, it is yours " ; ^ and Imogen 
argues in a classical phrase that Britain is outside the 
world, " in a great pool a swan's nest."^ Venice, said 
Howell, may be said to be walled with water: "it is 
the water, wherein she lies like a swan's nest, that doth 
both fence and feed her." * 

He says of the Venetian ladies that they wore bright 
colours and went unveiled. " They are low and of small 
statures for the most part, which makes them to raise 
their bodies upon high shooes called Chapins."^ We 

^ Epp. Ho-EL, p. 79 (i. ^ I, let. 36: Ven., 12 A^lg. 162 1). Cf. Love's 
Labour's Lost, iv. 2, 99-100. 

2 Cymheline, iii. 1,80-2. ^ Id., iii. 4, 142. 

"* See also Howell's Instructions for Forraine Travell, 1642, sect. vlii. : 
"A rich magnificent City seated in the very jaws oi Neptune." 

® Survey of the Signorie of Venice, p. 39. See Nares' Glossary, s.v. 
Chioppine, where numerous references to this Venetian custom are 
brought together. " The derivation is Spanish, (chapiyi)." New English 
Dictionary, s.v. Chopine, Chopin, says, " Identical with obs. F. chapins, 
chappins . . . mod. Sp. chapin . . Portuguese chapim. The Eng. writers 
c. 1600 persistently treated the word as Italian." 



292 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

remember the boy who played the female characters 
at Elsinore : "What, my young lady and mistress! 
By'r lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when 
I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine."^ The 
Venetian Senate often endeavoured to put down these 
pattens and wooden shoes, "but all women," said the 
traveller, "are so passionately delighted with this kind 
of state that no Law can wean them from it."^ He 
tells a story of a great lady who found a new use for 
the chopine. " Not long before her death, the late 
Queen of Spain took off one of her Chapines, and 
clowted Olivares about the noddle with it . . . telling 
him, that he should know, she was Sister to a King 
of France, as well as Wife to a King of Spain.^^^ The 
commoner kind of people used to walk shrouded in 
black veils, whereas in Rome or Naples all faces wore 
a "Celestial hue," according to Howell's valentine on 
Lady Robinson.* This shows incidentally how ac- 
curately the reproach of Imogen was directed against 
the Roman Bettina or Saltarella, whom Posthumus was 
supposed to have admired: "Some jay of Italy," she 
cries, "whose mother was her painting! " ^ The phrase 
itself seems borrowed from Roger Ascham's Toxophilus, 
in the passage where he inveighs against his country- 
men as being more Turkish than the Turks: "Our 
unfaithful sinful living, which is the Turk's mother, 
and hath brought him up hitherto, must needs turn 
God from us, because sin and He hath no fellowship 
together. If we banished ill-living out of Christen- 
dom, I am sure the Turk should not only, not overcome 
us, but scarce have a hole to run into, in his own 
country." ^ 

^ Hamlet, ii. 2, 444-7. ^ Howell, Survey, ic.s. 

^ Epp. Ho-El., p. 437 (ii. let. 43 : Fleet, i Dec. 1643). 

* Id., p. 271 (i. § 5, between lett. 21 and 22). 

^ Cymbeline, iii. 4, 51-2. ® Ascham, Toxophi us, ed. Arber, p. 81. 



SYRIAN WOLVES 293 



IV 



ANECDOTES AND LEGENDS IN HOWELL's LETTERS — IRISH 
FOLK-LORE — JOAN OF ARC 

Howell has also preserved an anecdote which may- 
throw light on a passage in ^^ You Like It. The 
comedy is based upon Lodge's Rosalynde as a ground- 
work, but the witty scene of the chorus of lovers is 
Shakespeare's own : — 

'■'■ Phe. Good shepherd, tell this youth what 'tis to love. 
Sil. It is to be all made of sighs and tears ; 

And so am I for Phebe : 
Phe. And I for Ganymede : 
Orl. And I for Rosalind : " 

and so on again and again. But what says Rosalind ? 
"Pray you, no more of this; 'tis like the howling 
of Irish wolves against the moon." ^ His hearers would 
expect ''Syrian," not "Irish," wolves — a common- 
place among writers of the day. When Samela turned 
out to be a king's daughter, poor Menaphon returned 
to his rustic loves. "Seeing his passions were too 
aspiring, and that with the Syrian wolves he barked 
against the Moon, he left such lettuce as were too fine 
for his lips."^ And so in Lodge's novel, where Gany- 
mede sits under the pomegranate bough and condoles 
with the shepherd : " I tell thee, Montanus, in courting 
Phoebe, thou barkest with the wolves of Syria against 
the moon, and rovest at such a mark with thy thoughts, 
as is beyond the pitch of the bow."^ The lovers in 
the comedy were all aiming too high and crying for the 

^ As You Like It, v. 2. 

^ Greene, Menaphon, ed. Arber, p. 92. Cf. id., p. 53 ; there Melicertus 
says to Samela : "Therefore I fear with the Syrian wolves to bark against 
the moon." 

^ Lodge, Rosalynde, ed. H. Morley, 1893, p. 163. 



294 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

moon ; but why like Irish wolves? The answer is that 
the Irish, like other northern nations, had been sus- 
pected of changing shapes with wolves when they 
pleased, or at a certain time of year. We should add 
that some of the peasantry were accused of worshipping 
the moon. 

''In Ireland^'''' said Howell, "the Kerns of the 
mountains, with some of the Scotch Isles, use a fashion 
of adoring the new Moon to this very day, praying 
she would leave them in as good Health as she found 
them."i Camden had written a strange account of 
these mountaineers, declaring that they took ''unto 
them Wolves to bee their Godsibs : whom they tearme 
Chari Christ, praying for them and wishing them 
well." 2 Spenser traced elaborately the legendary con- 
nection between the native Irish and the Scythians as 
described by Herodotus. "The Scythians said, that 
they were once every year turned into wolves, and 
so it is written of the Irish : though Mr Camden in 
a better sense doth suppose it was a disease, called 
Lycanthropia, so named of the wolf. And yet some 
of the Irish do use to make the wolf their gossip."^ 
Howell tells a story of "two huge Wolves" that stared 
at him while he was at luncheon under a tree in Biscay, 
but had the good manners to go away. "It put me 
in mind of a pleasant Tale I heard Sir Tho. Fairfax 
relate of a Soldier in Ireland.'''' The soldier being tired 
sat down under a tree to eat: "but on a sudden he 
was surpriz'd with two or three Wolves, who coming 
towards him, he threw them scraps of bread and cheese, 
till all was gone ; then the Wolves making a nearer Ap- 
proach to him, he knew not what shift to make, but by 



^ Epp. Ho-El., pp. 397-8 (ii. let. 11 : Westm., 25 A2ig. 1635). 

^ Camden, Scotia, Hibernia, etc., tr. Holland, 1610, p. 146. Camden 
was copying from I. Good : "A Priest . . . who about the yeere of our 
Lord 1566 taught the Schoole at Liynirick." 

^ View of present state of Ireland, 1596, in Works, ed, Morris, p. 634. 



IRISH TRADITIONS 295 

taking a pair of Bag-pipes which he had, and as soon 
as he began to play upon them the Wolves ran all 
away as if they had been scar'd out of their wits." 
But the soldier only said, " If I had known you had 
lov'd Musick so well, you should have had it before 
dinner."^ 

When As You Like It came out in the year 1599,^ 
any topical allusion to Ireland was sure of success. 
The arch-rebel, Hugh O'Neill, was leading a crusade 
against the English ; it was popularly believed that 
the Pope had sent him a plume of Phoenix feathers ; 
and he had been so far successful that he had crushed 
Bagenal at the Blackwater, and was maintaining a 
bold front against the wavering forces of Essex. It is 
not surprising therefore that the ichneumon of Egypt, 
or "Indian Rat," should be transferred to Ireland 
with the Syrian wolves. For what says Rosalind when 
she found the poem on the palm-tree? "I was never 
so be-rhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an 
Irish rat, which I can hardly remember."^ There is a 
reference, of course, to the idea that rats had been ex- 
pelled for many ages from the Isle of Saints. The 
historian, Gerald de Barry, had told the world how St. 
Yvor with bell, book, and candle had driven away all 
the rats in the Bishopric of Ferns, and the very words 
used in such exorcisms were well known. The rats, 
we learn, ''were so entirely expelled by the curse of 
St. Yvorus, the bishop, whose books they had probably 
gnawed, that none were afterwards bred there, or could 
exist if they were introduced."^ Shakespeare, we may 
add, seems to have been fond of a quip about Pytha- 
goras ; we have the case of the crocodile's transmigra- 

1 Epp. Ho-EL, p. 211 (i. § 3, let. 39: "from Bilboa," 6 Sept. 1624). 

^ 1599, at all events, is the date commonly agreed upon ; the evidence 
is indirect. See A. W. Ward, Eng. Dram. Lit., ii. 128-9. 

^ As You Like It, iii., 2, 186-8. 

^ Gir. Camb., Topographia Hibernica, Dist. ii. Cap. xxxii. (tr. Forester, 
p. 96). See id., cap. xix. for " Irish wolves." 



296 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

tion,i and the argument about Malvolio's grandmother 
in the shape of a woodcock.^ There is no reason, 
however, to suppose that he had studied the Italian 
philosophy, or Lucian's burlesque in the dialogue 
between the Cock and the Cobbler. He probably 
went no further than to Holinshed's Chronicle, where 
he could learn the dogma that an unworthy soul might 
be "shut up in the bodie of a slave, begger, cocke, 
owle, dog, ape, horsse, asse, worme or monster, there 
to remaine as in a place of purgation and punish- 
ment,"^ as indeed it was once said of the Trojan War : 
''How should Homer know anything about it, when 
he was himself at that very time a camel in Bactria?" 

We shall take leave of James Howell for the present 
after one more extract, which may serve to show how 
little even cultivated people knew or cared in his time 
about writing with historical accuracy. He writes to Sir 
John North from the fair town of Orleans, where he 
had seen a civil and military procession in honour of 
"La pauvre Pucelle " : "Jehanne la bonne Lorraine, 
qu'Anglois bruslerent a Rouen."* She was praised 
by the poets of her time as being very sweet and 
gracious: "Tres-douce, aimable, mouton sans orgeuil," 
is her character from Martial de Paris. She won at 
Patay in 1429 and was executed two years later ; yet 
Shakespeare allows her to beat Talbot at Chatillon in 
1453, in the shape of a ranting Fury, perhaps imagined 
as restored to some diabolic or magical kind of life.^ 
Howell's words show how little was known about the 
matter. "Her Statue stands upon the Bridge, and 
her Clothes are preserv'd to this day, which a young 
Man wore in the Procession ; which makes me think 



^ Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 7, 46-51. 
^ Twelfth Night, iv. 2, 54-65. 

^ Holinshed, The Description of Britaine, chap, ix., in Chronicles, 
U.S., i. 20. ■* Villon, Ballade des Dames dii Temps j'ad is. 

^ I Henry VI., iv. 7. 



HOWELL ON JOAN OF ARC 297 

that her Story, tho' it sound like a Romance^ is very 
true." The English had driven Charles VIL to 
Bourges in Berry, *' Which made him to be call'd, for 
the time. King of Berry." ''There came to his Army 
a Shepherdess, one Anne de Arque, who with a con- 
fident look and language told the King, that she was 
design'd by Heaven to beat the English, and drive 
them out of France. . . . The Siege was rais'd from 
before Orleans, and the English were pursu'd to Paris, 
and forced to quit that, and driven to Normandy : She 
us'd to go on with marvellous courage and resolution, 
and her word was Hara /za."^ 

1 Epp. Ho-EL, p. 140 (i. § 2, let. 23 : Orleans, 3 Mar. 1622). 



II. WARD'S DIARY 



THE REV. JOHN WARD — HIS MEDICAL TRAINING — HIS REMARKS 
ON CLERGY AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 

7"^ HE Rev. John Ward came to Stratford in 1662, 
and resided there until his death in 1681. He 
was always a literary man ; but he also took an active 
part in local affairs, not only as vicar, but also as a 
practising physician. Seventeen of his commonplace 
books came eventually into the possession of Dr. James 
Sims, an eminent writer upon medical subjects, who 
graduated at Leyden in 1764, and died in 1820. His 
library, including the commonplace books in question, 
became the property of the Medical Society of London ; 
and an important volume of extracts was issued in 1839 
by Dr. Charles Severn, then Registrar to the Society, 
under the title of the Diary of the Rev. John Ward, 
A.M., Vicar of Stratford-upon-Avon, extending from 
16^8 to id'^g. Dr. Severn states in his preface that on 
perusing the first volume, the series being in no regular 
order of date, he found that it was begun in the early 
part of 1661 and was completed ''at Mr. Brooks his 
house, Stratford-upon-Avon, April 25, 1663." Most of 
the entries related to theological and medical matters ; 
but he hoped that entries might be found in the other 
volumes relating, perhaps, to Shakespeare himself, or 
at least to his family and friends. He felt that the great 
precision of Ward's writing, and the generous way 
in which opponents were treated throughout the Diary, 
showed that dependence might justly be placed on a 



JOHN WARD 299 

person of so much learning, observation, and candour. 
''In this . . . search," he said, " I was fortunately not 
entirely disappointed ; and though the notices of 
Shakespeare made by Mr. Ward are, alas ! very few 
and brief, as they supply information at once novel, 
interesting, and of strict authenticity, they are of great 
value." ^ 

Mr. Ward was the son of a Northamptonshire land- 
owner, who fought as a lieutenant in Appleyard's Regi- 
ment, and was imprisoned by the Republicans after 
Naseby fight. John Ward was born in 1629, and took 
his Bachelor's degree at Oxford at the age of nine- 
teen, about the time when his series of Table-books 
begins. He remained at the University until he 
proceeded to the degree of M.A., in 1652. He 
studied divinity at the Bodleian, and made some 
progress in the Oriental languages, as well as in 
Anglo-Saxon literature, which was beginning to be 
a favourite subject ; but the bent of his mind was 
towards medicine, and he appears to have spent a great 
part of his time among the doctors and their apothe- 
caries, or with old Mr. Jacob Bobart, who kept the 
Physic Garden by Magdalen Bridge. Bobart's son, 
who succeeded to his post, was the ingenious fabricator 
of a dragon, made from a dead rat, which took in 
Magliabecchi and caused a great stir in the scientific 
world; it was kept in the Ashmolean Museum as "a 
masterpiece of art," and perhaps is still upon the 
shelves.^ Dr. Sydenham used to maintain that medicine 
could not be learned at the Universities, and that "one 
had as good send a man to Oxford to learn shoemaking 
as practicing physic";^ but Sydenham was all for more 

^ Ward's Diary, ed. Severn, preface, pp. xi.-xii, 

2 Gray, Notes on '■'■ Hudihras," quoted by Mr. B. D. Jackson in Diet. 
Nat. Biography, vol. v., s.v. Bobart, Jacob. The dates of the elder 
Bobart are 1599- 1680, of the younger, 1641-1719. 

^ Ward's Diary, u.s., p. 242. Thomas Sydenham (1624-89) was 
fellow of All Souls. 



300 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

anatomy, and for students learning their profession 
practically as apprentices ; and he was bitterly attacked 
by doctors of the old school as a decrier of natural 
philosophy. But there was no lack of surgery at 
Oxford, if one of Ward's friends is to be believed. A 
young surgeon named Gill told stories about " his Mr. 
Day," who had cut off plenty of limbs, and only two 
patients had died ; and of the German who killed a 
Balliol man by pricking a tendon, and even of a woman 
who was to be ''trepanned " on the ribs. Ward doubts, 
and asks " Whether it canne be?" and he sagely adds, 
" I suspected itt to be a ly."^ He tells us of a woman 
at the "Blew Bore," with three physicians in attend- 
ance, who could have saved her if a surgeon had been 
there to open a vein.^ There is another story about 
young Punter, who kept a tame viper, "which stung 
a dog of Bobarts, so that his head was twice as bigg as 
formerly, and Jacob gave him white horehound and 
aristolochia ^ in butter, and cured him presently."^ 
Some of the information comes from Stephen Toon, the 
apothecary, and Flexon, the barber, whose father kept 
the Chequers Inn, much used by the country carriers. 
Flexon said that he remembered Mrs. Kirk, a Court 
beauty, coming up in one of the waggons, in very 
mean attire, though she soon had a lodging at All 
Souls ; he also told Ward of a Cornet in the Guards 
who used to wash his face in sack and be shaved in 
half a pint of the same.^ We are told something of 
the "Antelope," where the landlord had such an in- 
firmity of sleep upon him "that if one yawned hee 
could not chuse but yawne " ; ^ something, indeed, 
about all the inns, except the "Crown," where Shake- 
speare lay. When Mr. Ward went up to London, he 

^ Id., pp. 280, 265-6. ^ Id., pp. 266-7. 

^ i.e. birthwort. Cf. Cicero, De Div., i. 10: "Quid aristolochia ad 
morsus serpentum possit." ■* Ward's Diary, p. 277. 

•^ Id., pp. 143, 162. ^ Id., p. 122. 



WARD AT OXFORD AND IN LONDON 301 

took lodgings at the "Bell," in Aldersgate Street, so 
as to be near ''Barber Surgeons' Hall." Lord Petre 
had a house in the same street,^ occupied at that time 
by the Marquess of Dorchester, "the pride and glory 
of the Society of Physicians. "^ Ward had much to say 
about the medical lectures, the skeleton in a frame 
above the table, and the wooden man showing the 
muscles, for which Dr. Charles Scarborough had paid 
;^io.3 The Doctor, who was afterwards knighted by 
Charles IL, had been a soldier, marching up and down 
with the army, as Aubrey records, until Dr. Harvey 
saw his merits, and said, " Prithee leave off thy gun- 
ning, and stay here: I will bring thee into practice."* 
Ward devoted himself chiefly to the study of domestic 
medicine, with a view to the necessities of a country 
living ; for he had made up his mind to settle down 
in some secluded place, where he could keep up his 
medical knowledge in the hours spared from Hebrew 
and Arabic. He appears to have been chiefly intimate 
with old Mr. Sampson and another chemist, George 
Hartman, who had served with Sir Kenelm Digby 
"for many years across the seas." Ward pronounced 
Sir Kenelm Digby to be " as great an empirick as any 
in Europe " ;^ but he was not above using some of his 
receipts. When "Goodie Tomlins" fell into some un- 
known disease at Stratford, we find him applying 
" Lucatella's Balsam," which Hartman prepared after 
his master's own receipt. " Mark what comes of itt,"^ 
says Ward ; but as it was chiefly composed of oil, wine, 
and wax, with St. John's wort and Venice-turpentine,'^ 

1 Id., p. 167. 

'^ Henry Pierrepont, first Marquess of Dorchester, second Earl of 
Kingston (1608-80), F.R.C.P., 1658. ^ Ward's Diary, p. 9. 

•* Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, 1898, i. 299, sub William Harvey. 

5 Ward's Diary, p. 173. 

^ Id., p. 248. The symptoms of the disease were asthmatic, accom- 
panied by bleeding from the lungs. 

■^ G. Hartman, True Preserver a^id Restorer of Health, 1682, pp. 241-5. 



302 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

it was not likely to do much harm. "Mr. Hartman," 
says Ward, "had a piece of unicorn's horn, which one 
Mr. Godeski gave him ; hee had itt at some foraine 
prince's court. I had the piece in my hand. ... It 
approved itself as a true one, as hee said, by this : iff 
one drew a circle with itt about a spider, shee would not 
move out of itt." ^ 

" A living drollery. Now I will believe 
That there are unicorns, that in Arabia 
There is one tree, the phoenix' throne " ; 

so vows Sebastian in The Tempest, and so agrees 
Antonio.^ But the story was upset by Shakespeare's 
little godson, when he was made page to the first 
Duchess of Richmond. Aubrey remembered hearing 
from Davenant how the Duchess "sent him to a famous 
apothecary for some Unicornes-horne, which he was 
resolved to try with a spider which he encircled in 
it, but without the expected successe ; the spider would 
goe over, and thorough and thorough, unconcerned."^ 
Before Mr. Ward went to Stratford, he tried to obtain 
permission from the Archbishop to practise medicine 
in all parts of England ; but he could only obtain a 
licence for the province of Canterbury. It will be 
remembered that the Bishops or Archbishops had 
power to allow their clergy to practise, whether they 
had taken a medical degree or not. The form of the 
permission appears by one of Ward's memoranda. 
"A licens granted to practice by Dr. Chaworth to Mr. 
Francis throughout the archbishop's province, itt did 
not cost him full out thirty shillings : there were some 
clauses in itt as ' quamdiu se bene gesserit,' and ' accord- 
ing to the laws of England,' but I suppose itt was the 
proper form which is used in such a case.""^ The 

^ Ward's Diary, pp. 171-2. ^ Tempest, iv. i, 21-3. 

^ Aubrey, op. cit. , i. 205, sub Sir William Davenant. 
^ Ward's Diary, p. 14. 



THE CLERGY AND MEDICINE 303 

diocesan officials seem to have given a good deal of 
trouble in the matter. " Mr. Burnet said of Mr. Francis 
his licens, that itt must bee renewed every year ; the 
apparitor would dunne him else, that his father never 
was nor never would be doctor ; and the apparitor 
used constantly to ply him, but he laughed him out of 
it."^ Mr. Ward collected evidence to show that 
physic had been practised by the clergy ever since the 
Conquest. He makes special mention of Nicholas de 
Farnham, the chief English physician, and Bishop of 
Durham ; Hugh of Evesham, physician and Cardinal ; 
Tideman de Winchcomb, Bishop of Llandaff, and 
afterwards of Worcester, who was chief physician to 
Richard II. ; John Chambers, Doctor of Physic, last 
head of Peterborough Abbey, and first Bishop of the 
new see; and Paul Bush, ''an Oxford B.D.," well 
read both in physic and theology, whose work on 
''Certayne Gostly Medycynes necessary to be used 
among wel disposed people to eschew and avoid the 
comen plague of pestilence," was printed by Redman. ^ 

1 Id., pp. 13-14. 

^ Id., pp. 117, 160. Nicholas of Farnham died in 1248; Ward writes 
his surname as Ternham (sic). Hugh of Evesham (d. 1287) was physician 
to Pope Martin IV. , and wrote Canones Medicinales. 

Ward is guilty, with Bishop Godwin (de Prcesulibus, ii. 138), of con- 
fusing Abbot (afterwards Bishop) John Chambers (d. 1556), whose de- 
grees were merely M.A. and B.D. of Cambridge, with John Chambre 
(1470- 1 549) dean of St. Stephen's, Westminster, and holder of various 
preferments at Lincoln and in other cathedral bodies. Chambre was a 
fellow of Merton, and warden from 1525 to 1544; he became M.D. of 
Padua in 1506, and of Oxford in 1531. He was physician to Henry VH. 
and Henry VHI. , and in the famous picture of Henry VHI. and the 
company of Barber-Surgeons he occupies a conspicuous place. The 
late Precentor Venables pointed out Godwin's error in Diet. Nat. Biog. , 
vol. X., sub Chambers, John, Ward probably borrowed it from God- 
win's work. See article by Dr. Norman Moore on John Chambre in 
Diet. Nat. Biog ti.s. 

" Syr Paull Busshe, prest and bonhomme of the good house Edynden " 
(^i.e. Edingdon), as he describes himself in the work mentioned in the text, 
was the first Bishop of Bristol in 1542. He married Edith Ashley, and 
resigned his see in 1554, from which time to his death in 1558 he was 
rector of Winterbourne, near Bristol. He and his wife are buried in the 



304 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

We may add to this list such names as those of the 
Rev. Charles Evelegh, M.D., vicar of Harberton, 
Devon, in 1678 ; the Rev. Hamnett Ward, D. Med. of 
Angers, rector of Porlock, Somerset, in 1662 ; and the 
Rev. William Stukely, M.D., rector of St. George's, 
Queen Square, in 1747, F.R.C.P., F.R.S., and F.S.A. 



II 

WARD AT STRATFORD — HIS NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE's DEATH 
— SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY EPIDEMICS — CONVIVIAL HABITS OF 
THE DAY 

When Mr. Ward came to Stratford in the winter of 
1662, he seems to have embarked without delay upon 
a course of medical experiments. The church bone- 
house, divided only by a door from the chancel, con- 
tained in itself a whole treasury of relics. He was 
interested in some question about the cranium, and 
there were plenty of skulls "knocked about the 
mazzard,"^ and piled on a shelf. "I searched thirty- 
four skulls, or thereabouts, and of them all I found but 
four which had the suture downe the forehead to the 
very nose ; another which seemed to have a squami- 
forme suture uppon the vertex, which I admird very 
much at."^ "Here's fine revolution, an we had the 

north aisle of the choir of Bristol Cathedral, It is to be noted that his 
"medycynes" against the pestilence were merely "gostly," 

Ward, between the names of Hugh of Evesham and Tideman, adds 
" Grysant, physician and pope." The reference is not obvious at first 
sight ; but he doubtless meant Guillaume de Grimoard, born at Grisac 
in Languedoc in 1309, a Benedictine, and abbot of St. Victor at Mar- 
seilles. He was for a time professor at Montpellier, the chief medical 
school of France. In 1362, on the death of Innocent VI., he was chosen 
pope at Avignon, and took the name of Urban V. See Gregorovius, 
Geschichte der Stadt Rovi (English translation, vi. 407). He is famous 
for his temporary transfer of the papacy from Avignon to Rome, 1367-70. 
He died in 1370, soon after his return from Rome. 

^ Hainlet, v. i, 97. ^ Ward's Diary, p. 238. 



WARD'S MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS 305 

trick to see't."^ Mr. Ward seems to have been a bold 
experimenter, perhaps not much averse from damaging 
a patient in the cause of science. '* Remember to hire 
some fellow or other to have a caustick made uppon 
him, that I may see the manner of itts operation." ^ 
When Goody Roberts caught the small-pox, he under- 
took the case, for, ''apothecaries in . . . suchlike 
diseases which are infectious, charge for attendance."^ 
He tried antimony for its action on the skin, quoting 
the authority of Dr. Sabel of Warwick, who gave a 
drachm at a time."* We observe that it was the chief 
ingredient in one of Hartman's receipts, invented by 
Dr. Cornachine of Pisa, who "made a great com- 
mentary on it," and strongly recommended by Digby. 
''The Diaphoretick Antimony you may buy for six- 
pence an ounce," says Hartman ;^ so that it had also 
the merit of cheapness. Ward said that it succeeded 
very well with his patient: "so that in short, I think 
diaphoreticks canne do no hurt in feavours, practice 
itt constantly." "^ On another occasion he says: "Can- 
not you use a loving violence? That expression 
was Phipps his, of giving nature a fillip. . . . He 
used in desperate cases to give many cordials ; and 
when he gave any thing that was desperate say, ' With 
itt they may die, but without itt they will die.' " '' 

Mr. Ward paid particular attention to fevers, as 
being especially prevalent at Stratford. He distrusted 
the ordinary methods of cure, and especially hated 
the doctors' fondness for bleeding, as if it must be 
the "prologue to the play."^ He laughed at their 
" Chaldcean charms," and could see little to admire in 
viper-broth, a mole's liver, or the foot of a tortoise.^ 

1 Hamlet, ti.s., 98-9. ^ Ward's Diary, p. 274. 

* Id., pp. 236, 106. * Id., p. 236. 

■' Hartman, True Preserver and Restorer of Health, 16S2, pp. 275-6. 

^ Ward's Diary, p. 236. '^ Id., p. 250. 

® Id., p. 252. 9 /g^_^ pp_ 242-3. 

X 



3o6 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

He was, in fact, remarkably free from the superstitions 
of his time ; but he would never open a vein when the 
moon was new or at the full.^ Most of the clerical 
practitioners in those parts seem to have hankered after 
the occult. Dr. Napier and his friend Mr. Marsh, both 
holding livings in Buckinghamshire, were astrologers 
as well as physicians.^ Mr. Marsh told a friend of 
Aubrey's that he worked under the direct guidance of 
certain "blessed Spirits"; and Nick Culpepper told 
Ward himself that "a physitian without astrologie is 
like a pudden without fat."^ The notes upon various 
local maladies have an interest in connection with 
Shakespeare's last illness. Ward remarked, for ex- 
ample, that after a cold winter and spring there was a 
great outbreak of measles, and *'men, about July, had 
agues and feavours in abundance " ; and most people 
were strangely disordered, "some with coughs, some 
with headach, some with one thing, some with an- 
other."^ Again, towards August, 1668, after a warm 
winter and spring and "a strange moist summer," 
there was a prevalence of throat disease and such-like 
distempers.^ All these feverish disorders were caused 
in Ward's opinion by " sootie vapours," or foul air.*^ 
Frogs and serpents could less live in Ireland, "foxes in 
Crete, stagges in Africa, horses in Ithaca, and fishes in 
warme water, than the heart of man abide with impure 
smels, or live long in infected air."^ His note on 
Shakespeare's illness is as follows: "Shakespeare, 
Drayton, and Ben Jonson, had a merie meeting, and itt 
seems drank too hard, for Shakespear died of a feavour 

1 Id., p. 253. 

'^ Richard Napier or Napper, 1559-1634, was rector of Great Linford, 
near Newport Pagnell. See Aubrey, op. cit., i. 91. 

^ Ward's Diary, p. 95. 

■* Id., pp. 270-1 : "After a cold winter, a cool spring, and a very hot 
summer." 

^ Id., p. 272; see also p. 160. "In the heat of sumer, about July 
and August (1668), wee had in Stratford fewer burials than ordinary." 

« Id., p. 254, 1 Id., p. 255. 



WARD ON SHAKESPEARE'S DEATH 307 

there contracted."^ We need not dispute the existence 
of the fever. The question is why Mr. Ward should 
have put it down to "drinking too hard." The story- 
may have come from one of the Harts or Mrs. Hatha- 
way of Chapel Street. The Vicar might have heard 
it at the "Bear," among the gentlemen's servants, or at 
the new "Falcon," with the poet's crest on the sign- 
board, or the "George," where, as we know from his 
Diary, he dropped in to take a flagon of ale.^ 

We learn nothing from Dr. Hall's case-books, which 
as we have seen, contained no memoranda of the 
year in which his father-in-law died. But we are not 
without the means of forming some opinion on the 
matter. The first quarter of the seventeenth century 
was marked by the appearance of epidemic fevers more 
malignant in type than the old-fashioned tertians and 
agues. There was a "new disease " in 1612, to which 
Henry, Prince of Wales, fell a victim. It seems to have 
been of a typhoid nature, to judge by the official 
reports and the discussion of the symptoms by Dr. 
Norman Moore in the volume printed for St. Bartholo- 
mew's Hospital in 1882.^ The epidemic of 1615-16 was 
more like some kind of influenza. The signs are 
described by Ben Jonson in Every Man in his Htimour. 
" My head aches extremely on a sudden," says Kitely. 
"Alas, how it burns," cries his wife. She thinks that 
her "good mouse" must have caught the fever, though 
it is only jealousy. " Keep you warm : good truth it is 
this new disease, there's a number are troubled withal." ^ 
The more virulent typhus was of rare occurrence, 
except the occasional visitations of gaol-fever, as to 
which Ward's Diary contains some useful remarks : 
" Within these eight or nine years there happened the 
like in Southwark, which did in King James' time, 

^ Id., p. 1S3. '^ Id., p. 141. 

^ The Illness and Death of Henry, Prince of Wales, in 1612, 1882. 

* Every Man in his Humour, ii. i. 



3o8 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

which Bacon mentions as killing the judges by the 
scent of the prisoners ; one speedie way to bring the 
plague." ^ War-typhus was not known in this country 
before 1643, and Shakespeare himself called England a 

" fortress built by Nature for herself 
Against infection and the hand of war."^ 

It raged as a pestilence during the Civil War. 
"Wounds of the body," says Ward, *^are more diffi- 
cultly cured when the air is corrupt, as appeared at 
Wallingford, in the time of the late warre, where, 
because the air was infected, allmost all wounds were 
mortall."^ "Mr. Swanne told mee a storie of the 
experience they had in feavours, in letting their men 
doe what they would ; their chyrurgions did keep them 
to a strict diet, as broaths and the like, in feavours, and 
they all died ; after, by permitting them to eat what 
they pleased in moderation, they lost not a man ; which 
argues the methodical doctors to bee infinitely out in 
their pretended way of cure."^ The "inch dyet," he 
concluded, "wherein wee eat by drammes and drink 
by spoonfuls, more perplexeth the mind than cureth 
the bodie."^ The Vicar described another "new dis- 
ease" which appeared at Stratford in his time, and 
commonly cloked itself "under the ague, so much the 
more dangerous." ^ 

Some thought that Prince Henry died of the ague ; 
but the more usual opinion was that he brought on his 
illness by an irregularity in melons or some such 
watery fruit. He had been bathing at Richmond too 
often. He was always taking oysters, like Lord 
Shaftesbury's friend, who had a full oyster-table at one 
end of the hall. The King himself had laughed at 
such a habit, saying, " Hee was a valiant man that 

1 Id. , p. 256. '■^ Richard II. , ii. i , 43-4. 

3 Ward's Diary, p. 235. ^ Id. , p. 253. 

^ Id., p. 254. ^ Id., p. 256. 



FEVERS AND EPIDEMICS 309 

durst first eat oysters," as Ward has noted. ^ Some said 
that the Prince played tennis too violently in a summer 
"excessive in degree and continuance of heat beyond 
the memory of living man " ; and yet people who got 
hot by exercise were not usually troubled with fevers 
**in regard that itt [the heat] evaporates the sootie 
vapours which cause them."^ Everyone was ready 
with some personal detail to account for the disease, 
like the gossips who talked to Mr. Ward about Shake- 
speare's case ; and they quite forgot that thousands 
of similar instances, to which these personalities could 
not be applied, were being registered in all parts of the 
country. Dr. Creighton has shown us in his work 
on Epidemics that the year in which Shakespeare died 
was extremely unhealthy. It was, indeed, a worse 
season than had been known since 1605, when there 
had been a bad outbreak of fever and plague ; and the 
mortality was not so great again until the fever-stricken 
summer of 1623. The winter that preceded the poet's 
death was of a very exceptional character. "Warm 
and tempestuous . . . winds prevailed from November 
to February." The storms came from the west and 
south-west, and there were East-Indian ships anchored 
for ten weeks in the Downs, unable to proceed down 
Channel. "The warm winds brought ' perpetual weep- 
ing-weather, foul ways and great floods.' " The spring 
came much too early, and we hear of blackbirds hatch- 
ing out their young in Archbishop Abbot's garden 
at Lambeth before the end of February. Altogether, 
though we do not know that any single type of disease 
predominated, it is clearly made out that there was in 
fact an extraordinary mortality.^ 

With regard to the Vicar's suggestion that the three 
poets held a convivial party, we should remember that 
at that time the subject of drunkenness was generally 

1 Id., p. in. - Id., p. 254. 

•" C. Creighton, History of Epidemics, i. 513. 



3IO ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

treated as a joke. "One Mr. Cutler, of our house," 
says the worthy Vicar, "when hee was allmost drunk, 
used to say, * Now, gentlemen, wee beginne to come to 
ourselves.'"^ He tells a story of a Dutchman who 
visited Oxford in his time, where "they did so liquor 
his hide " that he made an entry in his table-book of 
their Modus Bibendi called Once againe, "qui fecit me 
pernoctare in Bagley Wood."^ Burton was writing 
his book on Melancholy about the time of Shake- 
speare's death, though it was not published till about 
five years afterwards ; and according to him^ things 
were at such a pass "that he is no Gentleman, a very 
milksop, a clown, of no bringing up, that will not 
drink." Of the tradesmen he says that drinking was 
their ''' summuvi bonum . . . their felicity, life, and 
soul," and "their chief comfort, to be merry together 
in an Alehouse or Tavern, as our modern Musco- 
vites do in their Mede-inns, and Turks in their Coffee- 
houses." Their favourite proverb taught that there 
was as much valour in feasting as in fighting ; and so 
they "wilfully pervert the good temperature of their 
bodies, stifle their wits, strangle nature, and degenerate 
into beasts."^ If the meeting of the three poets took 
place at all, London would seem to be the likeliest place 
of rendezvous. Ben Jonson was employed there in 
1616 in bringing out the collected edition of his works, 
and it was in the same year that he produced his 
comedy called The Devil is an Ass. His conversations 
with Drummond at Hawthornden took place only three 
years afterwards. They talked about the merits of the 
English poets, including Drayton and Shakespeare, 
and about Jonson's own knowledge of their characters 
and his behaviour towards them. If the meeting had 
taken place, it would be strange indeed that it should 

^ Ward's Diary, p. 1 20. ^ Id. , p. 1 24. 

■^ Burton, Anato7ny of Melancholy, part i. § 2, memb. 2, subs. 2 (ed. 
Shilleto, vol. i. 261-3). 



WARD ON SHAKESPEARE 311 

not have been discussed on that occasion, especially as 
Jonson spoke of his dislike of Drayton. The visitor 
allowed that Michael Drayton's 'Mong verses pleased 
him not," and that he ** esteemed not of" Drayton; and 
he boasted that Drayton was afraid of him. At Strat- 
ford, however, it would seem the most natural of all 
things to suppose that Shakespeare would consort with 
the two great poets with whose names the townsmen 
were most familiar.^ 



Ill 

ward's memoranda on Shakespeare's art — illustrative 
phrases in the diary, 

Mr. Ward had something to say about Shakespeare's 
plays, though he seems to have known little about the 
poems. "I have heard that Mr. Shakespeare was a 
natural wit, without any art at all."^ Jonson was 
known to have said that Shakespeare "wanted art,"^ 
though he expressed a very different opinion in his 
introduction to the collected plays. Mr. Ward was 
perhaps referring to the ''Virgilian art," which was 
claimed for the poet on his monument. " Hee fre- 
quented the plays," continues the Vicar, "all his 
younger time, but in his elder days lived at Stratford, 
and supplied the stage with two plays every year, and 
for itt had an allowance so large, that hee spent att 
the rate of ;^iooo a-year, as I have heard." Others 
put the amount at ^^300 ; but even the latter opinion 
may have been exaggerated. " Remember," says 
Ward, "to peruse Shakespeare's plays, and bee much 
versed in them, that I may not be ignorant in that 

^ Notes of Ben Jonson s Conversations with William Drummond, ed. 
Lang (Shakespeare Soc. , 1842), p. 2. On p. 10 : " Drayton feared him ; 
and he esteemed not of him." ^ Ward's Diary, p. 183. 

•^ Notes oj Ben Jonson s Conversations , u.s., p. 3. 



312 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

matter." He already doubts in his own mind, 
"whether Dr. HeyHn does well, in reckoning up the 
dramatick poets which have been famous in England, 
to omit Shakespeare." 1 Dr. Peter Heylyn of Mag- 
dalen College, Oxford, wrote a celebrated Description 
of the Worlds first published in 1621, and afterwards 
expanded into the folio Cosmography.'^ The Puritans 
hated him for his opinions, and one of their preachers 
pointed out Heylyn to the congregation as the ''geo- 
graphical knave " that went to and fro and compassed 
the earth. The King ordered his book to be sup- 
pressed, because France and the French King were 
given precedence over England ; but the author got out 
of it by saying that the printer had changed "was" into 
"is," and that he took the rest of the sentence out of 
Camden, and was besides only speaking of England 
before it was "augmented by Scotland."^ Mr. Thorns 
quotes Aubrey as saying that Dr. Heylyn wrote the 
History of St. George of Cappadocia, "which is a very 
blind business ... I don't thinke Dr. Heylin con- 
sulted so much Greeke."* He also wrote an account 
of the Presbyterians, the famous life of Archbishop 
Laud called Cyprianus Angliciis (1668), and a curious 
work called A Help to English History, which became 
the foundation of Collins' Peerage and Baronetage.^ 
His opinions on Shakespeare as a dramatist seem 
to have been "a very blind business," to borrow 
Aubrey's phrase. 

■' Ward's Diary, pp. 183-4. 

^ The title of the original work was Mt/c/joKocTjUos, A little description 
of the Great World, expanded into Cosniographie in four bookes, contain- 
ing the horographie and historic of the whole world, etc. , 4 pt. , London, 
1652, fol. 

^ W. J. Thorns, Anecdotes and Traditions, illustrative of Early 
English History and Literature (Camden Society), 1839, pp. 2-33 (No. 
Ivii. , from Sir R. L'Estrange, No, 274). 

■* Id., 102-3 (No. clxxiv. ). 

•'' "HpwoXo7ta Atiglorum ; or, an Help to English History co7itaining a 
sttccession of all the Ki^igs of England, etc., 164 1, i2mo. 



GILDON ON SHAKESPEARE 313 

Gildon has a better account of the matter, though he 
was very ignorant about the " smaller pieces." Shake- 
speare, he says, wrote many plays, such as The Tempest, 
brought much into esteem by Mr. Dryden, and Pericles, 
'* much admired in the Author's Lifetime and published 
before his Death " ; but, after his list of genuine and 
doubtful plays, he adds, "Our author writ little else, 
we find in print only two small pieces of Poetry pub- 
lish'd by Mr. Quarles, viz ; Venus and Adonis, Svo, 
1602, and The Rape of Lucrece, 8vo, 1655." '^He was 
both Player and Poet ; but the greatest Poet that ever 
trod the stage. "^ Such, no doubt, was Mr. Ward's 
opinion. At any rate, he carried out his design of 
perusing the plays, since a folio Shakespeare appeared 
among the effects bequeathed by him in 1681 to his 
brother, the Rev. Thomas Ward, rector of Stow-on- 
the-Wold in Gloucestershire. The editor of his papers 
tells us that there was a slip of paper pasted into the 
volume with " W. Shakespeare" inscribed on it, and 
suggests that this may have been a genuine autograph 
obained at Stratford. ^ There are a few odd phrases in 
the Diary which show how constantly the compiler bore 
Shakespeare in mind. 

Of the May-weed, or wild camomile, Lyly had said 
in Euphues, that "the more it is trodden and pressed 
down, the more it spreadeth."^ Old Falstaff had repeated 
the metaphor : "The Camomile, the more it is trodden 
on the faster it grows."* It was indeed a regular say- 
ing among the farmers, who hated the straggling 
"mathes" which infested every pathway through the 
corn. Ward probably knew nothing about Euphues ; 
but he may, perhaps, have had Falstaff in his mind 
when he pressed the metaphor into his service. "The 

^ Langbaine, Account of English Dramatic Poets, continued by Gildon, 
1699, pp. 126-9. 
^ Ward's Diary, pp. 33, 24. ^ Euphues, 1579, ed. Arber, p. 46. 

"• I Henry IV., ii. 4, 441-2. 



314 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

Church of God," he writes, "is like camomill, the 
more you tread itt, the more you spread itt."^ 

We may find another example in Shakespeare's 
sonnet upon changeful weather : 

*' Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day 
And make me travel forth without my cloak? "^ 

The motive of the poem is shown by the words of Sir 
Proteus when he rhapsodises in the Two Gentlemen of 
Verona " : 

*' O, how this spring of love resembleth 
The uncertain glory of an April day, 
Which now shows all the beauty of the sun, 
And by and by a cloud takes all away. " ^ 

In the second quatrain of the sonnet we are reminded 
that a half-cure is no cure at all ; it is not enough to 
wipe the rain-drops from the storm-beaten face : 

'* For no man well of such a salve can speak 
That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace." 

Mr. Ward may have had this in his thoughts when 
he wrote the memorandum in his book: " Hee that is 
branded with anie hainious crime, when the wound is 
cured, his credit will bee killed with the scarre.""^ 

He meditates upon death thus: "Wee poor men 
steal into our graves with no greater noise than can bee 
made by a sprigg of rosemary or a black ribband . . . 
no comet or prodigie tolls us the bell of our departure."^ 
We remember the "fires in the element" that boded 

^ Ward's Diary, p. 211. 2 Sonnet xxxiv. 

^ Tiijo Gentlemen of Verona, i. 3, 84-7. ^ Ward's Diary, p, 229. 

^ It is not unlikely that Ward may have remembered the prodigies 
related in Macbeth, act ii. sc. 4. His phrase "tolls the bell of our 
departure" echoes the characteristic accent of the most striking- pas- 
sages in that tragedy. His sentiment, in a more violent form, occurs in 
Webster's White Devil, with a strong similarity of phrase. 
" O thou soft natural death, that art joint-twan 
To sweetest slumber ! no rough-bearded comet 
Stares on thy mild departure. ..." etc. 



SHAKESPEAREAN PHRASES IN WARD 315 

CcBsar's death, and spirits running up and down in the 
night/ and how Shakespeare improved Plutarch's story 
by adding the "exhalations whizzing in the air," and 
all the phenomena of a great meteor-shower : 

'* Never till to-night, never till now, 

Did I go through a tempest dropping fire."^ 

For a more modern example we may cite Howell, tell- 
ing his father of the Queen's death at Denmark House: 
''which is held to be one of the fatal Events that 
follow'd the last fearful Comet that rose in the Tail of 
the Constellation of Virgo.^^^ Mr, Ward found as many 
prodigies and omens in his own experience as had 
been observed during the siege of Jerusalem. "The 
Stars to do their duty did not fail ; the elements have 
often spoke already." So sang George Wither un- 
melodiously in his Sighs for the Pitchers;'^ and the 
Vicar adds, "Wee had two comets succeeding each 
other in few months before the late devouring pestilence 
and consuming fire, visibly seen in and over London, 
not to bee paralleld in any age."^ But the star-gazers, 
as Howell said, were always obtruding their predic- 
tions, and were so familiar with the heavenly bodies 
" that Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe were Ninnies to 
them." 6 

In the same letter of Howell we have a Shakespearean 
phrase, of which Ward afterwards made a singular use 
in describing the Gunpowder Plot. " I fear, that while 
France sets all wheels a-going, and stirs all the Caco- 
dcEmons of Hell to pull down the House of Austria^ 

^ North, Phitarch, ed. Rouse, vol. vii. pp. 202-3. 

^ Julius CcBsar, ii. i, 44 ; i. 3, 9-10. 

3 Epp. Ho-EL, ed. Jacobs, p. 105 (i. § 2, let. 7 : 20 Mar. 1618, O.S.). 
Mr. Jacobs points out {id., p. 719) that Anne's death took place at 
Hampton Court, not Denmark House, on 2 March, 1618-19. 

■* Sigh[s\for the Pitchers : Breathed out in a Personal Contribution to 
the National Humiliation, etc. 1666, p. 16. 

" Ward's Diary, p. 309. 

'^ Epp. Ho-EL, p. 506(11. let. 76: Fleet, 3 Feb. 1646). 



3i6 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

she may chance at last to pull it upon her own head."^ 
The last words seem to refer to what Henry VIII. said 
about the Supplication of the Beggars: " If a man 
should pull down an old stone wall and begin at the 
lower part, the upper part might chance to fall upon 
his head." 2 As to the cacodsemons, their very name 
implies that they were the worst of fiends. In Greek, 
the word is an adjective implying subjection to a bad 
angel or evil genius.^ In the science of astrology it 
was a term of deep meaning, and signified the '' twelfth 
House" in a figure of the heavens, ''because of its 
baleful signification."* Shakespeare, however, uses 
the word as if it only meant a demon. Queen Mar- 
garet applies it with great force to Richard III. : — 

'* Hie thee to hell for shame and leave this world, 
Thou Cacodaemon ! there thy kingdom is." ^ 

To understand further Ward's use of the phrase, we 
must turn to the dialogue between Duke Humphrey 
and his wife in the second part of Henry VI. " Nay, 
Eleanor," he chides; and "Ill-nurtured Eleanor," and 
"wilt thou still be hammering treachery?"^ When 
Ward describes the Gunpowder Plot, we see that he is 
combining two or three Shakespearean phrases, and is 
not borrowing from letter-writer or astrologer: "It 
is said of the gunpowder plott, that itt seemd a piece 
rather hammerd in hell by a conventicle of caco- 
demons, than tracd by humane invention."^ 

1 Id., p. 505, U.S. 

^ Fox, Acts mid Monuments, 3rd ed., 1576, p. 896. See Fish's Suppli- 
cation, ed. Arber, pp. xv.-xvi. 

^ Liddell and Scott cite Aristophanes, Eq., 112, for the substantival use 
of Ka/coSaf/ttwj' = an evil genius, as in Shakespeare. 

^ In this sense cf. Fletcher, The Bloody Brother, iv. 2 : " The twelfth 
the Cacodemon" (cited by New Eng. Diet. s.v.\ 

^ Richard III., i. , 3, 143-4. ^ ^ Henry VI., i. 2, 41 50. 

"^ Ward's Diary, p. 163. 



WARD AND THE HISTORICAL PLAYS 317 



IV 

HISTORICAL REFERENCES — WARD ON THE HISTORY AND AN- 
TIQUITIES OF STRATFORD AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD — HIS 
ACQUAINTANCE WITH SHAKESPEARE'S RELATIONS 

Let US now consider some of the historical memo- 
randa, which are scattered without order through the 
Diary, though they all seem to have a direct bearing 
on the subject of the Vicar's studies. The first relates 
to one who, like his master, assumed ''the port of 

Mars," one of 

" the very casques 
That did affright the air at Agincourt. " ^ 

*' Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick," says Ward, 
"was a roaring housekeeper, six oxen being usually 
eaten att a breakfast att his house in London, and every 
taverne full of his meate : and any who had acquaint- 
ance with the familie might have as much sodden and 
roost as hee could carrie on a dagger." ^ 

We next have a picture of "impious Beaufort, that 
false priest," who "limed bushes to betray the wings" 
of Humphrey of Gloucester : — 

" Beaufort's red sparkling" eyes blab his heart's malice, 
And Suffolk's cloudy brow his stormy hate."^ 

This Beaufort, said Ward, was the great Cardinal 
"who was reported to say on his deathbed, ' Iff all Eng- 
land could save his life, he was able, either by monie 
or policie, to procure itt.'"^ 

'■'■ King. How fares my Lord, speak, Beaufort, to thy sovereign. 

^ Henry V., prologue, 11. 6, 13-14. '^ Ward's Diary, p. 139. 

=* 2 Henry VI., ii. 4, 53-4; iii. i, 154-5. 
^ Ward's Diary, p. 177. 



3i8 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

Cardinal. If thou be'st death, I'll give thee England's treasure, 
Enough to purchase such another island. 
So thou wilt let me live, and feel no pain." ^ 

In another passage he discusses the policy of Arch- 
bishop Chichele, who was accused, perhaps unjustly, 
of having promoted war with France in order to stave 
off an attack upon the Church. The opening scene in 
Henry V. explains the situation. The Commons were 
eager for a Bill, which had already passed their House 
in ''the Ignorant Parliament" : 

*' If it pass against us, 
We lose the better half of our possession." 

"Thus runs the bill," says Canterbury, and "This 
would drink deep," says Ely. " 'Twould drink the cup 
and all ! " " But what prevention ? " The conversation 
must be supposed to take place in the second year of 
Henry's reign, Chichele having been translated from 
St. David's to the primacy on the 27th of April, 1414. 
He explains to the Bishop of Ely that young Harry 
seems indifferent, or rather swaying somewhat towards 
the Church : 

" I have made an offer to his majesty . . . 
Which I have opened to his grace at large, 
As touching France, to give a greater sum 
Than ever at one time the clergy yet 
Did to his predecessors part withal." 

Harry of Monmouth, he maintains, is the heir of Phara- 
mond and Charlemagne, and of the Lady Ermengarde, 
from whom the fair Queen Isabel, otherwise the "French 
she- wolf," derived her title, the heir of Pepin and 
" Bertha Broadfoot," so that, as the learned prelate con- 
cludes in the next scene : 

*' As clear as is the summer's sun, 

King Pepin's title and Hugh Capet's claim. 
King Lewis his satisfaction, all appear 
To hold in right and title of the female."^ 

^ 2 Henry VL, iii. 3, 1-4. '^ Henry F., i. 2, 86-9, 



ARCHBISHOP CHICHELE 319 

The Bishop of Ely makes an excellent remark about 
the King's virtues having been hidden under the veil 
of wildness : 

"The strawberry grows underneath the nettle, 
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best 
Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality " ; 

and the audience would naturally be pleased with the 
allusion to the great strawberry-banks, the saffron-beds, 
and the rose-thickets of Hatton House. 

" My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn, 
I saw good strawberries in your garden there. "^ 

Ward remarks with some acuteness that Hergry V. was 
not called ''his majesty." "The titles of kings have 
much alterd. Grace was the title of Henry the 4th, ex- 
cellent grace of Henry the 6th, and majestic of Henry 
the 8th ; before, they were usualy calld soveraigne lord, 
leige lord, and highnes." ^ 

"Archbishop Chichly," he says, "having persuaded 
King Henry the 5th to a warre with France, built a 
colledg in Oxon, to pray for the souls of those who 
were killed in the warres of France. He called it All 
soulls, as intended to pray for all, but more especialy for 
those killed in the warrs." " King Henry the 5th . . . 
again had a great mind to the clergie's revenues in 
England, and had probably effected itt, had not Chickley 
advisd him to warrs in Fraunce."^ 

The Vicar has left us a very interesting account of 
the town and its immediate neighbourhood. "Wee 
are ignorant," he writes, " of the reason of the names of 

^ Henry V.,i. i, 60-2 ; Richard III. ^ iii. 4, 32-4. The Bishop of Ely 
in Henry V, would be John de Fordham (d. 1425) ; in Richard HI. John 
Morton, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1500). 

^ Ward's Z)?arj/, p. 311. The title of "majesty" was assumed first 
in Spain by Charles V. after his election as Emperor. " The vanity of 
other courts soon led them to imitate the example of the Spanish " 
(Robertson, Charles V., bk. i. p. 116, in one vol. ed.). In Richard III., 
for example, Shakespeare alternates between the use of "grace" and 
" majesty." ^ Ward's Diary, pp. 172, 310. 



320 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

many townes and places in England, they being of 
Saxon original ; for the Romans first, and the Saxons 
afterwards, did without doubt give names to most 
places."^ " Stratford is so called from a street passing 
over a ford." "Avon a British word, aufona with them 
signifying as much as fluvius with us." "Arden signifies 
a woody place, and was so used by the Galls and the old 
Britons."^ We place his scattered notes in some 
order of date, ^i Stratford superr Avon belonged to the 
Bishop of Worcester, three hundred years before the 
conquest. . . . Our church is of auncient structure, 
and little lesse than the conqueror's time. Robert de 
Stratford, who afterwards was bishop, was parson 
of Stratford. . . . Our Thursday mercate att Stratford 
was graunted to the towne in King Richard the First's 
time, through the meanes of John de Constantiis, Bishop 
of Worcester. ... A fair procurd for Stratford by 
Walter de Maydenstone, made Bishop of Worcester in 
Edward the Second's time, which should last fifteen 
days, beginning on the eve of St. Peter and St. Paul. 
. . . John de Chesterton, a lawyer in Edward the 
Third's time, hadd the mannor of Stratford, in lease of 
the Bishop of Worcestor ; but in the third of Edward 
the 6, Nicholas Heath passd itt to John Dudley, Earl of 
Warwick, for lands in Worcestershire. Stratford was 
made a corporation in the seventh of Edward the sixth. 
In the eighteenth of Elizabeth, the mannor was 
graunted to Ralph Coningsby, by lease for twenty-one 
years. "^ 

He gives Sir Hugh Clopton the credit of having 
built the transept, or '* north and south crosse," of 
Stratford Church. He has a notice also of the arms 
on Sir Hugh's cenotaph : " Itt was a usage in auncient 
time, where they could hitt of anything that sounded 
neer or like their names, to bear itt in their armes, as 

1 Id., p. 291. 2 /^^^ pp_ 18^^ 1^8^ j^^_ 

3 Id., pp. 185-7. 



THE CLOPTONS AND ARDENS 321 

Clopton hath a tunne."^ No doubt he was thinking 
of Shakespeare with the De Mauley falcon and lance, 
and Lucy with his fishes hauriant ; and the Cloptons 
might have given him an example from Suffolk, where 
Mr. Abel, a great clothworker, had a monument in 
Nayland Church : "and to signify his name, as also to 
make up his coat-armour, the letter A. and the picture 
of a bell are cast upon the monument. "^ 

His notice of the old Arden stock is not quite in 
accordance with the received opinion. Mr. Hunter, 
for instance, taking Edward Arden's execution as a 
starting-point, gives the following account of his de- 
scendants. By his wife, a daughter of Sir Robert 
Throckmorton, he had three daughters, who married 
into the great Warwickshire families of Devereux, 
Somerville, and Shuckborough ; "he had also a son, 
Robert Arden, who recovered Park -hall, and was 
living there in 162 1. From him several Ardens de- 
scended ; and in the female line the persons are in- 
numerable who descend from these Ardens."^ But as to 
the male line, Mr. Ward only says : "The last of the 
Ardens, which was Robert, dyed at Oxford, unmarried, 
an. 1643."^ The list of Warwickshire gentlemen on 
the King's side printed in Symonds' Diary for 1645, 
contains no mention of any Arden, though it notices Sir 
Richard Shuckborough and Mr. Devereux of Shustoke 
as having taken an active part, and "Justice Combes 
of Stratford-upon-Avon," who "sitts at home."^ 

1 Id., p. 140. A similar case in point is the tun in tlie punning coat-of- 
arms of Taunton. On p. 187 Ward notes : " Sir John Clopton's sonne 
buried in the vault under his seat, by mee on Saturday night, Aug, 11, 
1666." 

2 There is now no monument of the kind remaining at Nayland — 
unless one of the brasses whose matrices remain in the floor of the 
church may have displayed this coat. 

^ Joseph Hunter, Ne-w Illustrations of the Life, etc., of Shakespeare, 
1845, i. 33-43. * Ward's Diary, p. 147. 

^ Symonds, Diary of Marches kept by the Royal Army (Camden 
Society), 1859, pp. 191-2. "Shistock" is his form of "Shustoke." 
Y 



322 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

Mr. Ward's account of the Charlecote family is for 
the most part derived from Dugdale. "The Lucies 
are descended of the Montforts : William de Lucy was 
heir to Walter de Cherlcote. . . . The Lucies great 
lovers of horses aunciently, proved by one of them 
giving forty mark to a London merchant for one in 
King Edward the First's time, which was then a vast 
summe." Sir Thomas Lucy the first much enlarged 
Charlecote Park ' ' by the addition of Hampton Woods. " ^ 
Of Sir Thomas Lucy, his grandson, we hear some- 
thing in Howell's correspondence. He was supposed, 
at any rate, to be in Venice, and received jovial 
messages from friends at home: "My Lady Miller 
commends her kindly to you, and she desires you to 
send her a compleat Cupboard of the best Christal 
Glasses Murano can afford by the next shipping ; 
besides she intreats you to send her a pot of the best 
Mithridate, and so much of Treacle. . . . Farewell, 
my dear Tom^ have a care of your courses, and con- 
tinue to love him who is — Yours to the Altar, J.H."^ 
Mithridate and Venice -treacle were supposed to be 
antidotes to all kinds of poison ; and so Love, by 
Diella's poet, was called the " Mithridate to overcome 
the venom of disdain."^ 

We suppose that the Vicar's friend, Mr. Russell,* 
was the son or near relation of Mr, Thomas Russell, 
who knew the poet very well and acted as supervisor 
of his will. Mr. Ward has one or two anecdotes about 
them which shows that they belonged to the celebrated 

^ Ward's Diary, p. 187. The order of the citations is slightly altered. 
See Dugdale, Aiitiquities of Warwickshire, ed. Thomas, 1730, i. 502, etc. 
Ward adds to the words " Hampton Woods," the note " (Dugdale)." 

2 Epp. Ho-El., U.S., pp. 419-20 (ii. let. 27 : Westm., x^Jan. 1635). 

^ R. L. , Diella, Sonnet xii. 9-10, in Arber, Eng. Garner, vii. 195. So 
in Taylor's Pennyles Pilgriviage, 1618 : " Mithridate, that vigrous health 
preserves." 

* Ward's Diary, p. 285 : " Mr. Russell told me of an auncient minister 
in their country," etc. 



THE LUCIES AND THE RUSSELLS 323 

west-country stock. *' I have heard this account of 
the rise of the family of the Russels. About the time 
when Philip, King of Castile, father to Charles the 
Fifth, was forcd by foul weather into the harbour of 
Weymouth, Sir Thomas Trenchard bountifully enter- 
taind this royal guest ; and Mr. Russel, a gentleman 
or esquire of Kingston Russel, in the countie of 
Dorset, who had travaild beyond seas, and was much 
accomplisht himself, was sent for to compleat the enter- 
tainment. King Philip took such delight in his com- 
panie, that when hee went home, hee recommended 
him to Henry the 7th, as a person of abilities to stand 
before princes. King Henry the 8th much favoured 
him, making him controller of his house, privy 
counseller, and made him Lord Russel. Edward 
the 6th, (made him) Earl of Bedford. Two rich 
Abbeys, Tavistock and Thorne, in Cambridgeshire, 
fell to him att the dissolution."^ 

There are other entries bearing on the domestic 
affairs of Shakespeare's family. We hear of a Stratford 
tradesman called Thomas Rogers, a relation of the 
Philip Rogers whom Shakespeare sued for debt in the 
Borough Court. ^ He left two sons, Joseph and 
Thomas ; and when administration was granted to 
Thomas Rogers the younger, ^'Joseph was, as itt 
were, distracted. Witness Goody Hathaway and Mr. 
Burnet."^ This "Good-wife" is thought to have 
been Mrs. Joan Hathaway, widow of Thomas Hathaway 
of Weston and afterwards of Stratford, who lived as 
a widow in a shop at Chapel Street from 1655 ^o her 
death in 1696. Her death, it is generally agreed, 
"terminated the connection of the poet's Hathaways 
with Stratford and its neighbourhood."* It may be 

^ Id., 175. Thorne is usually spelt Thorney. Woburn also was 
granted him in 1550. 

'-^ See Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 77-8. 

^ Ward's Diary, p. 187. ^ Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., ii. 189. 



324 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

mentioned, however, that Mrs. Baker, while in charge 
of the " Hathaway Cottage," in 1866, wrote a letter, 
in the writer's possession, in which she claimed 
to be a member of the family. "My great-grand- 
mother," she said, "was the last of the Hathaway 
name, it having been since lost by marriage " ; and she 
appears to have been under the impression that she 
might be described as being in some sense "a descend- 
ant of Anne Hathaway." 

Mr. William Hart, the hatter, who married Shake- 
speare's sister Joan, died in the same year and month 
as the poet ; but his widow lived on at the house in 
Henley Street, next to the Swan Inn, for about thirty 
years afterwards.^ The Vicar has something to say 
about their trade ; and it seems, indeed, as if he had 
been ready with a remark before every window and 
penthouse. "Hats," he notes, "invented since the 
reign of Queen Elizabeth." ^ He may have had the 
Stratford Register in mind, where the epithet "hatter" 
is given to William Hart for the first time in 1605.^ He 
was talking, at any rate, of high hats. There were 
hats as well as hosen, we suppose, from a period of 
remote antiquity. The rustic in Lydgate's London 
Lyckpeny saw hats enough near Westminster Hall, 

' ' Where flemynges began on me for to cry, 
Master, what will you copen or by? 
Fyne felt hatts, or spectacles to reede, 
Lay down your sylver, and here you may speede."^ 

We find all kinds of delicate fine hats in the plays, the 
"thrummed hat,"^ the rye-straw,*^ the "copatain," that 
went with velvet hose and a scarlet cloak,^ besides 
the pilgrim's cockle hat as shabby as his clouted 

^ Id., i. 387. She died in 1646. ^ Ward's Diary, pp. 296-7. 

^ Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., ii. 52. 

* St. vii. , as reprinted in Skeat's Specimens of English Literature^ 
779^-7579. ® Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 2, 80. 

^ Tempest, iv. i, 136. ' Taming of the Shrew, v. i, 69-70. 



HATTERS AND BARBERS 325 

shoon.i There was a Statute of Hats and Caps which 
prescribed the height and quality of the head-gear for 
the various grades of society ; it had been passed in the 
reign of Queen Elizabeth to check the sudden luxury of 
the steeple-like and bell-shaped structures, and the 
threatened collapse of square-caps and round-caps and 
old English bonnets of blue. " Round knitt caps were 
the ancient mode," says Mr. Ward, '' before hatts came 
upp, and a capper of Bewdley then was a very good 
trade. "2 

Before the barber's shop he muses on ^'crisped 
locks," and tresses that live *'a second life on second 
head."^ The poet had compared dark hair to wires, 
and waving curls to a golden mesh, that entrapped the 
hearts of men ''faster than gnats in cobwebs."* 
"Fair hair, as the poets say, is the prison of Cupid; 
that is the cause, I suppose," the Vicar continues, "the 
ladies make rings and brooches, and lovelocks to send 
to their lovers, and why men curl and powder their 
hair, and prune their pickatevants."^ The last term is 
taken by his editor as referring to mustachios, but it is 
more likely that Ward meant the pointed beards, peaked 
a la Pique-devant. 

He had something to say about the tithes which 
figure so largely in the list of Shakespeare's possessions. 
It appears that they might have been abolished under 
the Commonwealth, though "warranted by an Act of 
State as high as Offa's time," had it not been for the 
interference of Francis Rouse. " The buisnes of tithes 
in the Protector's time being once hotly agitated 
in the council, Mr. Rouse stood upp and bespake them 
thus: 'Gentlemen,' says he, 'I'll tell you a storie ; 
being travelling in Germany, my boot in a place being 

^ Hamlet, iv. 5, 25. ^ Ward's Diary, p. 297. 

^ Merchant of Venice, iii. 2 ; Sonnet Ixviii. 
^ Sonnet cxxx. ; Merchant of Venice, u.s. 
® Ward's Diary, p. 103. 



326 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

torne, I staid to have itt mended, and then came to mee 
a very ingenious man and mended itt ; I staying the 
Lord's day in that place, saw one who came upp to 
preach who was very like the man who mended my 
boot ; I inquired and found itt was he, itt grievd mee 
much ; they told me they had tithes formerly, but now 
being taken away, the minister was faine to take any 
imployment on him to get a living.' I heard," said 
Ward, "this storie turnd the Protector, and hee 
presently cried out, ' Well, they shall never mend 
shoes while I live.'"^ 

^ Id., p. 121. 



III. DOWDALL, AUBREY, ETC. 
I 

DOWDALL's letter to SOUTHWELL, 1693 — RODD's PREFACE 
— DOWDALL AT KINETON — HIS VISIT TO STRATFORD 

WE shall now examine the statements of persons 
who visited Stratford before the close of the 
seventeenth century, either with a view of inspecting 
the monuments or of picking up anecdotes about 
Shakespeare's life. We shall begin with the account 
of Stratford given by a barrister named Dowdall, who 
visited the town in 1693 on his way to the Assizes at 
Warwick. Some of his recollections are cited by Mr. 
Halliwell-Phillipps under the heading of "Anecdotes 
respecting Shakespeare, from a little manuscript account 
of places in Warwickshire by a person named Dow- 
dall, "^ and the whole work was published in 1838 by 
Mr. Rodd, "the learned bookseller, "^ in a pamphlet 
entitled Traditionary Anecdotes of Shakespeare. The 
manuscript had come into his possession about four 
years previously at the sale in which Lord de Clifford's 
papers were dispersed. It is in the form of a letter, 
dated the loth of April, 1693, and written from Butler's 
" Merston,"^ "which is eight miles from Warwick, six 
miles from Stratford-super-Avon, and one mile from 
Kineton," not far from the main London road, which 

1 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 71-2 (being No. vii. of the extracts 
grouped under the general heading of " Biographical Notices "). 

2 Thomas Rodd the younger (1796-1849), who carried on his father's 
(d. 1822) business from 1821. The pamphlet is so small that references 
in the footnotes would be superfluous. ^ Usually " Marston." 

327 



328 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

led to Stratford by Kineton Field and Edgehill. " The 
Assize, "says the writer, " begins at Warwick to-morrow 
morning, and in order to be there to hear the charge 
&c. from Mr. Justice Clodpate, viz. Justice Ne — 1, my 
friend and I ride thither this afternoon ; we shall stay 
there till thursday." The letter has no formal signature, 
but ends with a jocular message "from your very faith- 
full Kinsman and most affte humble servt till death, 
John at Stiles." It is addressed to the writer's cousin, 
Mr. Edward Southwell, and was endorsed by him, 
''From Mr. Dowdall, Description of several places in 
Warwickshire." 

"Brief as the notice of the poet is," said Mr. Rodd 
in his interesting preface, "it is nevertheless of great 
curiosity and importance, since it appears to indicate 
the source of much of the information which has been 
handed down to us by Aubrey ; and to point out one 
of the persons who have invented, or perpetuated, 
the few anecdotes of his early life that have reached us." 
He quotes Malone for the statement that Aubrey col- 
lected his materials about 1680, and adds that, from the 
coincidences in the two sets of anecdotes, there can be 
no doubt that both received them from the clerk who is 
mentioned in the letter. He expresses his own opinion 
that the reports of "the vagrant tenor" of the poet's 
youth are no more entitled to credit than the later 
fables which have been thrust into the biographies. 
"The most monstrous conjectures respecting him," he 
complains, "have been boldly advanced, many of them 
at total variance with each other." He quotes the old 
poaching story as an example of the effect produced 
by naming a well-known locality as the scene of a 
legendary occurrence. A visit to the supposed place 
of an imaginary event "hallows the deception," till 
even the most incredulous yield to the delusion. When 
Malone, he says, proved that there was no park at 
Charlecote, "the Lucys . . . shifted the locality,". being 



THOMAS RODD ON SHAKESPEARE 329 

determined not to lose the honour of being robbed 
by Shakespeare. An amusing illustration is added 
from the Life of Sir Walter Scott. The incident is 
taken from a letter written by Miss Scott to Mrs. 
Lockhart from Carlisle. "We went to the Castle, 
where a new showman went through the old trick 
of pointing out Fergus Maclvor's very dungeon. 
Peveril said — ' Indeed — are you quite sure, sir?' And 
on being told there could be no doubt, was troubled 
with a fit of coughing, which ended in a laugh. The 
man seemed exceeding indignant : so when papa 
moved on, I whispered who it was. I wish you had 
seen the man's start, and how he stared and bowed 
as he parted from us ; and then rammed his keys into 
his pocket and went off at a hand-gallop to warn the 
rest of the garrison. But the carriage was ready, and 
we escaped a row."^ Mr. Rodd next referred to the 
absurd suggestion that the ''well-made and graceful" 
Shakespeare was lame of one leg, because in the thirty- 
seventh Sonnet he compared himself to a decrepit father, 
and complained of being "made lame by fortune's 
dearest spite " ; while, of course, no attention is paid to 
the other half of the metaphor : — 

" So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised, 
Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give 
That I in thy abundance am sufficed 
And by a part of all thy glory live." 

In his Macbeth again, and in Henry VIII., he has 
left us, says Mr. Rodd, complete evidence of his being 
a Protestant; "yet, because there are in his Hamlet 
some allusions to the rites of the Roman church, he 
has been set down as a Catholic." The reference is to 
Ophelia's "maimed rites," and the death of Hamlet's 
father " unhousel'd, disappointed, unaneled " ; ^ but it 

^ Lockhart, Life of Scott, i vol. ed., 1845, pp. 687-8. 
- Hamlet, v. i, 242 ; i. 5, 77. 



330 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

should have been stated that there is a definite asser- 
tion by the Rev. Richard Davies, made at some time 
before 1708, that Shakespeare "died a papist." ^ 
Nothing, however, has been adduced that is worthy of 
the name of evidence, and the statement may now be 
disregarded. "It would appear," says Mr. Rodd, 
"from the practice of some recent writers, that where 
the great dramatist is the subject, each conceives him- 
self at liberty to add whatever his fancy may dictate to 
those already apocryphal accounts of him " ; and as a 
climax he points out that someone had the hardihood to 
doubt the poet's identity, "having laboured to prove 
that he was one and the same person with Christopher 
Marlowe ! " 

In reading the young barrister's sprightly effusion one 
must regret that he only cast a glance towards "our 
English tragedian," though he was rapt in admiration 
of the Beauchamp tombs at Warwick, being to his 
mind such a fair and stately assembly " which . . . 
will afford matter enough to feed the most hungry pen 
in Europe for a considerable time." He rebukes his 
dear cousin for the brevity of his news from home. 
" But 'tis folly to expect a fee-farm of joys in this 
world ; we must down on our marrow-bones, and thank 
heaven for affording us one single glance. This epistle 
(I suppose) you may justly call Mr. D — ll's travels into 
Warwickshire, for herein you shall have such par- 
ticulars as I can at present call to mind, and by this 
prolix relation I shall partly (tho' not designedly) re- 
venge the brevity of yours. On Friday, the loth of 
March last, I set out from London, and lay that night 
at Aylesbury. The next day I came hither to Butler's- 
Merston." He then proceeds to describe his friend's 
ancient mansion with its demesnes, the noble fishponds 
and great dovehouse, "and in the stables there be as 

^ Printed in Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., li. 71. See full discussion, 
id., i. 263-6, and supra, pp. 40-1. 



WARWICK GENTLEMEN AT KINETON 331 

stately a number of horses as a man can wish or desire 
to ride on." ^ 

^' Having come so far, I may now venture to inform 
you of our advances abroad ; and in order to that, I 
must acquaint you first that there is a knott in these 
parts that meet at Kineton every Saturday in the after- 
noon, who are one and All, of which number my friend 
is one ; and they are as true and sincere as they are 
generous and hospitable." This looks like a reference 
to the Merry Wives of Windsor: 

''Shallow, etc. Well met, Master Ford. 
''Ford. Trust me, a good knot: I have good cheer at 
home, and I pray you all go with me." 

Then Ford becomes afraid that some tough knot might 
be knit, ''a knot, a ging, a pack, a conspiracy," against 
him ; ^ and we find something like it in Mr. Pepys' 
Diary, when he notes that ''all do conclude Mr. 
Coventry, and Pett, and me, to be of a knot ; and that 
we do now carry all things before us." ^ 

The chief person in the Warwickshire society was 
Mr. Charles Newsham of Chadshunt,^ a good scholar 
and historian, ''a great admirer of your Royal-Society- 
learning, but not to be infatuated with the itch of experi- 
mental discoveries, &c." Next came his son-in-law, 
Mr. Peeres, who lived at his manor of Alveston on the 
Avon.^ ''Another of the fraternity is Justice Bentley, 
an honest true-hearted gentleman," living at Kineton. 

1 " The Manor House has belonged to descendants of the Woodward 
family since the time of Queen Mary. Richard Woodward and his 
brother, who supported King- Charles, were both slain at the battle of 
Edge Hill." — Murray's Warwickshire, p. 105. 

2 Merry Wives of Windsor, iii. 2, 51-3; iv. 2, 123. 

^ 16 Dec. 1662, in Diary, ed. Braybrooke, 3rd ed., 1848, ii. 79. 

■* A mile and a half N.N.E of Kineton. " Chadshunt House was 
formerly the seat of the Newsham family, in the park is the well of St. 
Chad, in which pilgrims used to bathe," etc. Murray's Warwickshire, 
p. 104. 

'" Two miles N.E. of Stratford, close to the road from Kineton. 



332 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

Mr. Loggins of Butler's - Marston, was the fourth : 
''excellent company, and keeps as excellent cyder." 
From all these gentlemen Mr. Dowdall received oblig- 
ing civilities ; "and, as a mark of their kindness and 
esteem, they have admitted me of their society. . . . 
Now I proceed to inform you what antiquities I have 
observed, and now and then, if I should prove tedious 
by telling stories relating to these matters, you will, I 
hope, excuse it, for 'tis what I thought worthy my 
remembrance, and by consequence my friends. The 
first remarkable place in this county that I visited, was 
Stratford-super-Avon, where I saw the effigies of our 
English tragedian, Mr. Shakespeare : part of his 
epitaph I sent Mr. Lowther, and desired he would 
impart it to you, which I find by his last letter he has 
done ; but here I send you the whole inscription. 
Just under his effigies in the wall of the chancell 
is this written. Judicio Pylium &c."^ The visitor 
does not describe the "effigies." "Near the wall," 
continued Mr. Dowdall, "where his monument is 
erected, lieth a plain freestone, underneath which his 
body is buried, with his epitaph made by himself a little 
before his death : — 

" ' Good friend, for Jesus sake forbear 
To dig the dust enclosed here. 
Blest be the man that spares these stones, 
And curst be he that moves my bones.' 

"The clerk that showed me this church was above 
eighty years old. He says that this Shakespeare was 
formerly in this town bound apprentice to a butcher, 
but that he ran from his master to London, and there 
was received into the playhouse as a servitour, and by 
this means had an opportunity to be what he afterwards 
proved. He was the best of his family ; but the male 

•^ Halliwell-Phillipps printed " Pylum," and the sentence "Just . . . 
written." Rodd probably altered the error, but omitted to transcribe the 
sentence. 



THE STRATFORD TOMBS 333 

line, is extinguished. Not one, for fear of the curse 
above said, dare touch his grave-stone, tho' his wife 
and daughters did earnestly desire to be laid in the 
same grave with him." The Parish-books show that 
one William Castle, born in 1628, was clerk and sexton 
at the time of Mr. Dowdall's visit, and throughout all 
the latter part of the century. It has been frequently 
assumed that it was he who gave the curious informa- 
tion about the poet and his family; but it is very unlikely 
that a clever young barrister should have taken a person 
of about sixty-five for a man ''above eighty years old," 
more especially as on that theory he would have been 
talking to one who was born in Shakespeare's lifetime. 
The visitor made no special remark upon Mr. John 
Combe's tomb, which is generally admired as Gerard 
Johnson's best piece of work ; he merely said that there 
were some fine monuments, including one in memory 
of George Carew, Lord Carew of Clopton, created 
Earl of Totnes in 1626.^ He was *' a considerable man 
in Ireland in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and also 
in the time of King James, both there and in England. 
He died tempor. Car i. His brave actions and titles 
of honour are here upon his monument enumerated, 
which are too tedious to be here inserted. There is 
also the monument of the Cloptons here, who are an 
ancient family : there are some of them still remaining 
in this town." 

^ In 1605 he had been created Baron Carew of Clopton House. The 
date of his death on the monument is 27 March 1629. He married Joyce, 
daughter and heiress of William Clopton and Anne his wife. His father 
was George Carew, Dean of Exeter (d. 1583). 



334 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 



II 

DOWDALL's visit to WARWICK — THE BEAUCHAMPS AND 
NEVILLES IN SHAKESPEARE — THE GREVILLES 

" I shan't trouble you any more in this place," Dow- 
dall continues, ''but my next stage shall be to the 
Church of Warwicke." He begins his description of 
that church with an account of Thomas Beauchamp, 
Earl of Warwick, who fought at Crecy and Poitiers, 
and of his son Thomas, the thirteenth Earl, whose 
honours were forfeited under Richard II., but restored 
when the new reign began. " I made my next step to 
the monument of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, 
son to the last mentioned Earl Thomas : he died at 
Roan,^ anno 1439, and lies buried in a vault here ; in 
memory of whom stands the noblest monument that 
ever my eyes beheld ; 'tis in my judgment, much 
beyond Henry the seventh's. His statue in brass, 
double gilt, is the most exact and lively representation 
that hitherto I ere met with." Then follows the in- 
scription, showing how the said " Richard Beauchamp, 
late Earl of Warwicke, Lord Despenser of Bergavenny, 
and of mony greate other Lordships," died in 1439, 
" he being at the time Lieutenant Generall and Govern- 
our of the Roialme of France and of the Dutchy 
of Normandy by sufficient authority of our soveraign 
lord the King Harry the VI." Round the main effigy 
were fourteen statues of gilt copper representing the 
great man's kindred. "To recount the many noble 
exploits of this man would require a treatise of itself — 
nay, the stories of him which still continue fresh in 
this town of Warwick would be very tedious," says 
Mr. Dowdall. The autobiography of Thomas Hearne 
the antiquary shows that there was such a separate 

^ i.e. Rouen. 



BEAUCHAMP iMONUMENTS 335 

treatise, and gives a clue to the source of the traditions 
current in Warwick. It was compiled by John Ross 
the Hermit, who wrote the history of Warwick Castle, 
and is catalogued by Hearne among the works which 
he had edited as ''The contents or Arguments of John 
Ross's book (in the Cottonian Library) of the story 
of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. From a 
MS. of Sir William Dugdale in Museo Ashmol. Oxon. 
pag. 359."^ Might we not presume that Shakespeare 
would be familiar with the history of the Beauchamp 
line, and made some reference to all these local glories? 
Perhaps, indeed, this may be the origin of his 
"brass eternal" and the "tombs of brass" in the 
sonnets,^ and the opening words of Love's Labour's 
Lost : — 

" Let fame,, that all hunt after in their lives. 
Live register'd upon our brazen tombs, 
And then grace us in the disgrace of death. "^ 

But on turning to the historical plays the great 
Earl's portraiture is found to be strangely distorted. 
Let us take the first part of Henry VI. The scene 
in the Temple Garden is ascribed by most competent 
critics to Shakespeare,** though many other passages 
may have been written by Marlowe or another. Its 
date is fixed, by the entry of Edmund Mortimer, to some 
time between Henry the Sixth's accession in 1422 and 

^ The Life of Mr. Thomas Hearne , . . from his own MS. copy, 1762, 
p. 100, in appendix relating to his edition of the Monk of Eveshan's 
History. No. i of the same series of appendices describes his own edition 
of "John Ross's historical account of the Earle of Warwick, from an 
eminent MS. in the hands of Tho. Ward, of Warwick, Esqr., p. 217." 

^ Sonnets Ixv., cvii. ; also Iv., "the gilded monuments of princes"; 
ci., "a gilded tomb." The phrase in Hamlet, i. 4, 48-50 (quoted below, 
p. 343), is admirably descriptive of many contemporary monuments that 
Shakespeare must have seen, e.g. William Clopton's tomb at Stratford or 
the Hunsdon tomb in Westminster Abbey — both erected about 1596, 
before the date oi Hamlet, 

^ Love s Lahours Lost, i. i, 1-3. 

•* e.g. Dr. Furnivall and Dr. A. W. Ward (a cautious assent). 



336 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

Mortimer's death in 1425, and the "Warwick" of that 
time was, therefore, the high and puissant Prince who 
died at Rouen and was laid at Warwick " in a fair chest 
of stone. "^ He was standing in the garden when the 
debate between Plantagenet and Somerset began. 
"Judge you, my Lord of Warwick, then between us." 
As we all know, he plucked the White Rose of York, 
loving no colours, as he said, and showing no "colour 
of flattery." But what a picture he draws of his own 
position and character. His mind is given up to hawks 
and hounds. He can judge between a couple of Toledos 
" which bears the better temper " : 

" Between two horses, which doth bear him best ; 
Between two girls, which hath the merriest eye ; 
I have, perhaps, some shallow spirit of judgment. 
But, in these nice sharp quillets of the law, 
Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw."^ 

The great Earl was succeeded by his son Henry, Earl 
and Duke of Warwick, crowned "King of the Isle of 
Wight" shortly before his death in 1445. His sister, 
Anne Beauchamp, was permitted to carry the earldom 
with her on her marriage with Richard Neville, eldest 
son of the Earl of Salisbury ; ^ he was Earl of Salis- 
bury himself before he died at Barnet, but will always 
be best remembered as Warwick the Kingmaker. 

The second part of Henry VI. confuses the valiant 
Beauchamp with his son-in-law, the more popular hero. 
Beauchamp had helped to conquer Anjou and Maine 
and our other possessions in France. But the credit 

^ Richard Beauchamp had succeeded to the earldom on the death 
of his father in 1401. ^ i Henry VI., ii. 4. 

3 Dug-dale, Ant. War., ed. Thomas, 1730, i. 414-15. The widow of 
Earl Richard, Isabelle le Despenser, who died 27th Dec, 1439, was 
buried in Tewkesbury Abbey, where, in 1422, she had erected the beau- 
tiful chantry-chapel to the memory of her first husband, the Earl of 
Abergavenny and Worcester — another Richard Beauchamp, and cousin 
to her second husband. Hence the Earl of Warwick's title, u.s., " Lord 
Despenser of Bergavenny." 



THE EARLS OF WARWICK 337 

of his actions is claimed for his successor, Richard 
Neville, when the provinces were yielded up in 1445 : 

" Anjou and Maine ! myself did win them both ; 
Those provinces these arms of mine did conquer : 
And are the cities that I got with wounds, 
Deliver'd up again with peaceful words ? 
Mort Dieu! "i 

Even if we go back to the times before Agincourt, we 
find the same confusion. There is a ''Warwick" in 
the second part of Henry IV. He is, of course, no 
other than the great Earl entombed among the double- 
gilt statues. But the King is made nevertheless to 
call him "Cousin Nevil," as if he must have belonged 
to the blood of ''the setter-up and plucker-down of 
Kings." '^ Mr. Dowdall evidently followed all the 
lineal changes with interest. " There be severall other 
large and fine monuments belonging to the family of 
the Nevilles, that after the Beauchamps came to be 
Earls of Warwick, and also many noble monuments 
in memory of the family of the Dudleys, who were 
Earls of Warwick after the extinguishment of the 
Nevilles." 

"Besides this, there is the monument of Sir Foulke 
Greville, which, as I am informed by the learned in 
the orders of building, is for its architecture inferior to 
none in the kingdom. The epitaph on the tomb is in my 
mind worth your knowing, which is this, viz : — ' Fulke 
Grevil, servant to Queene Elizabeth, Councellour to 
King James, and Friend to Sr Phillip Sidney : Trophceum 
peccati:'' Now I will bid adieu to monuments and cast 
my eye on Kenilworth." The same thought appears 
in the title of the biography, "The Life of the re- 
nowned Sir Philip Sidney. With the true interest of 
England, &c : Written by Sir Fulke Grevil, knight, 
lord Brook, a servant to Queen Elisabeth, and his 

^ 2 Henry VI., i. i, 119-23. '- 2 Henry IV.-, iii. i, 66. 



338 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

companion and friend."^ Lord Brooke died in 1628, 
and was succeeded by his cousin, Robert Greville, who 
was killed at Lichfield in 1643, upon St. Chad's Day, 
by a shot from a deaf and dumb boy among the de- 
fenders of St. Chad's Cathedral.^ Lord Brooke, says 
Aubrey, "was armed cap a pied; only his bever was 
open. I was then at Trinity College in Oxon. and doe 
perfectly rememember the story. "^ The first Lord 
Brooke has earned a title for devoted friendship, as 
Eusebius was content to take the name *' Pamphili," as 
the friend of his master, St. Pamphilus. But Aubrey, 
who loved the memory of Lord Bacon, has left a bitter 
paragraph about Greville, which cannot properly be 
omitted. 

"In his lordship's prosperity. Sir Fulke Grevil, lord 
Brookes {sic) was his great friend and acquaintance ; 
but when he (Bacon) was in disgrace and want, he was 
so unworthy as to forbid his butler to let him have any 
more small beer, which he had often sent for, his 
stomach being nice, and the small beere of Grayes 
Inne not liking his pallet. This has donne his memory 
more dishonour then Sir Philip Sydney's friendship 
engraven on his monument hath donne him honour. "^ 

1 Published in 1652. Title in Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, i. 275. 

^ There is a good account of the legend of Lord Brooke's death at 
the hands of "Dumb Dyott " in Mr. A. B. Clifton's Cathedral Church 
of Lichfield, 1898, pp. 12-15. The shot was said to have been fired from 
the central tower, the spire of which was destroyed in the ensuing siege. 
Lord Brooke took Stratford-upon-Avon before his death. 

•^ Aubrey, op. cit., i. 275, sub Greville. 

* Id., i. 67, sub Francis Bacon. Aubrey's citation of authorities which 
he intended to verify some day is very characteristic. " Vide . . . History, 
and (I thinke) Sir Anthony Weldon." 



HALL'S LETTER TO THWAITES 339 
III 

WILLIAM hall's LETTER TO EDWARD THWAITES, 1 694 

Mr. Dowdall's account of his visit should be read in 
connection with the letter by William Hall found at the 
Bodleian in 1884 and published in the papers of June 
the 24th in that year ; a copy was also printed by Mr. 
Halliwell-Phillipps.^ William Hall was a young gradu- 
ate of Queen's College, Oxford, and his letter was 
addressed to his friend, Edward Thwaites, who was 
already a Fellow of that College. It must have been 
written after the end of the autumn term, or about 
Christmas, in the year 1694, the date being approxi- 
mately fixed by a reference to a promised list of Stafford- 
shire words, which duly arrived in Oxford on the 2nd 
of January. Mr. Thwaites was a great philologist. He 
lectured on Anglo-Saxon and helped Hickes in his 
Treasury of the Northern Languages ; "a very beautiful 
transcript of Somner's (Anglo-Saxon) Dictionary, with 
Thwaites' additions, is now among the Ballard MSS. 
in the Bodleian, written by himself with the greatest 
accuracy and neatness."^ He was beloved by all his 
contemporaries. Mr. Brome, in writing to Ballard, 
gives us an anecdote about him on the authority of 
Dr. Bernard, who was a great book collector, as well 
as being Serjeant-Surgeon to Queen Anne. **Mr. 
Thwaites I was most intimately acquainted with and 
have by me several of his letters. He was certainly one 

^ Shakespeare's Grave. Notes of Traditions that were current at 
Stratford-on-Avon in the latter part of the Seventeenth Century, privately 
printed, 1884. 

'^ Thwaites' various accomplishments are recorded in Diet. Nat. Biog., 
vol. Ivi. In 1698 he became Fellow and "Anglo-Saxon Preceptor" of 
Queen's College ; it was during this period that Hickes' Treasury 
appeared (1703-5). In 1708 he became Regius Professor of Greek and 
Whyte's Professor of Moral Philosophy. He died at Iffley in 171 1. 



340 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

of the greatest geniuses of the age : much a gentleman, 
a good-natured man. His patience and magnanimity 
in his sufferings from lameness was beyond compare : 
so great that it was not impertinent in Serjeant Bernard, 
his surgeon, to acquaint Queen Anne therewith, who 
ordered him ;^ioo, and made him Greek Professor in 
Oxford." Some say that the Queen gave double that 
amount. 

His friend, William Hall, was the son of an inn- 
keeper at Lichfield. He was educated at the Cathedral 
Grammar School, and at the age of seventeen was 
nominated one of the Batlers, or servitors, at Queen's 
College. His friend Thwaites had been a Batler, one 
of these Pueri Pmiperes, at St. Edmund's Hall ; 
Humphrey Wanley,^ the Earl of Oxford's learned 
librarian, occupied the same position ; and we read 
in Hearne's autobiography how his patron, Mr. Cherry, 
had him entered as "a Battelar of Edmund-Hall," in 
Michaelmas Term, 1695.^ The word is, of course, 
derived from the "battels," or rations, from the buttery- 
hatch ; at Cambridge they are called "sizings," which 
Ray derived from "size," a cant word for half a loaf. 
In the diverting play of The Puritan, so long ascribed 
to Shakespeare, an adventurer is made to say: " I am 
a poor gentleman, and a scholar ; I have been matricu- 
lated in the university, wore out six gowns there 
. . . went bareheaded over the quadrangle, ate my 
commons with a good stomach, and battled with dis- 
cretion."^ Shakespeare really used the Cambridge 
phrase, as might be expected from the friend of Frank 
Beaumont and "Jack Fletcher": "No, Regan," says 
King Lear, 

" Thy tender-hefted nature shall not give 
Thee o'er to harshness ... 

^ 1672-1726. ^ Life of Mr. Thomas Hearne, u.s., p. 4. 

^ The Puritan, i. 2 {Suppletnentary Works of Shakespeare, ed. W. 
Hazlitt, 1852). 



WILLIAM HALL OF LICHFIELD 341 

'Tis not in thee 
To grudge my pleasures, to cut oflF my train, 
To bandy hasty words, to scant my sizes." ^ 

Mr. Hall matriculated in 1690, and "put on his gown" 
in October, 1694. His letter to Thwaites was written a 
few weeks later from the ''White Hart," at Lichfield, 
kept by his father, Mr. William Hall, the vintner. 
"Dear Neddy," he begins, " I very greedily embrace 
this occasion of acquainting you with something which 
I found at Stratford-upon-Avon. That place I came 
unto on Thursday night, and the next day went to 
visit the ashes of the great Shakespear which lye 
interr'd in that church. The verses which, in his life- 
time, he ordered to be cut upon his tombstone, for his 
monument have others, are these which follow, — 

Reader, for Jesus's sake forbear 
To dig the dust enclosed here ; 
Blessed be he that spares these stones, 
And cursed be he that moves my bones. 

The little learning these verses contain would be a very 
strong argument of the want of it in the author, did 
not they carry something in them which stands in need 
of a comment. There is in this church a place which 
they call the bone-house, a repository for all bones they 
dig up, which are so many that they would load a great 
number of waggons. The Poet, being willing to pre- 
serve his bones unmoved, lays a curse upon him that 
moves them, and haveing to do with clerks and sextons, 
for the most part a very ignorant sort of people, he 
descends to the meanest of their capacitys, and dis- 
robes himself of that art which none of his co-tempor- 
aries wore in greater perfection. Nor has the design 
mist of its effect, for, lest they should not only draw 

^ King Lear, ii. 4, 173-8. Mr. W. J. Craig, in his edition of the play 
(1901), quotes Sherwood's English-French Dictionary (1622) : " To Size, 
En rUniversite de Cambridge, c'est la mesme chose, comma to battle en 
Oxford." 



342 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

this curse upon themselves, but also entail it upon their 
posterity, they have laid him full seventeen foot deep, 
deep enough to secure him. And so much for Strat- 
ford, within a mile of which Sir Robinson lives, but it 
was so late before I knew, that I had not time to make 
him a visit. Mr. Allen Hammond, the bearer hereof, 
my particular acquaintance and schoolfellow, upon Mr. 
Dean's recommendation designs for Queen's, and in- 
tends to have Mr. Waugh for his tutor. I desire that 
you would assist him in what you can as to a study, 
and make use of your interest with the senior poor 
children to be kind to him in what concerns the going 
about the fires. My bed, which is in Pennington's 
chamber, I have ordered him to make use of, if he 
need one, and do desire you to help him to it. Pray 
give my service to Jacky White, Harry Bird, and to 
all my Lichfield acquaintance, when you see them, and 
to all those also that shall ask after me. As for the 
Staffordshire words we talked of, I will take notice of 
them and send them. Pray let me hear from you at 
Mr. Hammond's man's return, wherein you will greatly 
oblige your friend and servant, Wm. Hall. Direct 
your letter for Wm. Hall, junr., at the White-hart 
in Lichfield. For Mr. Edward Thwaites in Queen's 
College in Oxon." 

Mr. Hall took his M.A. degree in July, 1697. He 
was afterwards collated to the rectory of Acton, 
Middlesex, and in the spring of 1708 became Pre- 
bendary of Chiswick in St. Paul's Cathedral.^ He 
finished building the parsonage house at Acton just 
before his death in December, 1726; which caused Mr. 
Edward Cobden, his successor, to inscribe on one of 
the windows a set of verses on the time-honoured theme, 
'' Sic vos non vobis nidificatis aves."^ 

^ Le Neve, Fasti Ecc. Ang., ii. 379. 

^ See E. Walford, Greater London, i. 18. 



GILDON ON SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE 343 



IV 

A NOTE BY GILDON — AUBREY — MR. BEESTON's INFORMATION IN 

Aubrey's mss, — the "butcher-boy" and davenant legends 

Gildon is our authority for another piece of gossip. 
He says of Shakespeare, in his edition of Langbaine, 
that he was buried with his wife and daughter in Strat- 
ford Church, under a monument with the inscription 
" Ingenio Pylum," etc., showing a carelessness even 
greater than Pope's in the matter of quotation.^ "I 
have been told that he writ the Scene of the Ghost in 
Hamlet, at his House which bordered on the Charnel- 
House and Churchyard." ^ He may have been thinking 
of the College ; but he ought to have known that New 
Place was not near the church. The Ghost in Hamlet 
reminded Gildon of churchyards, in the absence of any 
precise ideas about the high platform at Elsinore. 
''What may this mean? That thou, dead corse" — we 
know the Prince's thought : — 

" Let me not burst in ignorance ; but tell 
Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, 
Have burst their cerements ; why the sepulchre, 
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd, 
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws, 
To cast thee up again. "^ 

We must now quote some of the information which 
Aubrey derived from Dr. William Beeston or from his 
papers. It is in the form of a contrast between Shake- 
speare and Jonson. Beeston recollected the sturdy 
laureate very well, but had very dim recollections of 
what he had heard in his boyhood about "that Greater 
Spirit." The wonder is that Aubrey himself had not 

^ Cf. supra, p. 332, note i. 

^ Langbaine, Account of English Dramatic Authors, ed, Gildon, 1699, 
p. 126. ^ Hamlet, i. 4, 46-51. 



344 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

made inquiries when he was an undergraduate in Dr. 
Ralph Kettell's time. Mr. Howe, as we have seen, 
was a tutor, fond of talking about the poets. Dr. 
Kettell was a contemporary of Shakespeare, being in 
his seventy-ninth year in 1642, when young Beeston 
and Aubrey came up. Aubrey says that he spoke much 
about the Articles, "and the rood-loft, and of the 
wafers," and remembered "those times. "^ His brain, 
says the biographer, was "like a hasty pudding," 
where memory and judgment and fancy were "all 
stirred together. "^ He hated a periwig-pated fellow, 
and periwigs had gone out of fashion since the poet's 
time; "he beleeved them to be the scalpes of men 
cutt off after they were hang'd, and so tanned and 
dressed for use."^ We already have noticed the story 
of his reception of the kindly meant present which Mr. 
Howe's mother sent from Grendon Underwood.^ It 
is probable, said Aubrey, that the doctor would have 
"finisht his century," if it had not been for the Civil 
War; but all discipline and learning began to disappear 
when the army came in. " I remember, being at the 
Rhetorique lecture in the hall, a foot-soldier came in 
and brake his hower-glasse. . . . Our grove was the 
Daphne for the ladies and their gallants to walke in, 
and many times my lady Isabella Thynne would make 
her entrey with a theorbo or lute played before her. I 
have heard her play on it in the grove myselfe, which 
she did rarely ; for which Mr. Edmund Waller hath in 
his Poems for ever made her famous."^ The under- 
graduates seem to have got completely out of hand. 

^ Aubrey, op. cit, ii. i8, sub Ralph Kettell. Aubrey wrote "36" 
Articles, with ^' quaere " in the marg-in. 

^ Ibid., p. 19. Aubrey was quoting from one of the fellows of 
Trinity. ^ Ibid., p. 21. '^ Supra, pp. 184-5. 

s Aubrey, ti.s., p. 24. He notes that Lady Isabella Thynne "lay 
at Balliol College"; her friend, Mrs. Fanshawe "lay at our college." 
See Waller's poems, ed. G. Thorn Drury, 1893, p. 90: Of my Lady Isabella, 
playing upon a Lute. 



AUBREY AT OXFORD 345 

The President used to call them '' Tarrarags (these were 
the worst sort, rude rakells), Rascal-Jacks^ Blindcinqiies^ 
Scohherlotchers (these did no hurt, were sober, but went 
idleing about the grove with their hands in their 
pocketts, and telling the number of the trees there, or 
so)."^ We cannot tell which class was affected by young 
Mr. Beeston, but it is pretty clear that Aubrey himself 
was a Scobberlotcher. 

Aubrey doubtless obtained from "old Mr." Beeston 
a tradition of Shakespeare which he wrongly attributed 
to another poet, ''Michael Drayton, esq., natus in 
Warwickshire at Atherston upon Stower (quaere 
Thomas Mariett). He was a butcher's sonne. Was 
a squire ; viz. one of the esquires to Sir Walter Aston, 
Knight of the Bath. . . . He lived at the bay-windowe 
house next the east end of St. Dunstan's Church in 
Fleet-street."^ "From Mr. Beeston" he heard a 
similar story in the other case. ^ "Mr. William 
Shakespear was borne at Stratford-upon-Avon in the 
county of Warwick. His father was a butcher, and I 
have been told heretofore by some of the neighbours, 
that when he was a boy he exercised his father's trade, 
but when he kill'd a calfe he would doe it in a high 
style, and make a speech. There was at that time 
another butcher's son in this towne that was held 
not at all inferior to him for a naturall witt, his 
acquaintance and coetanean, but dyed young. This 
William, being inclined naturally to poetry and 
acting, came to London, I guesse, about 18 ; and 



^ Aubrey, m.5. , p. 26. ^ Id., i. 239, suh Michael Drayton, 

^ "From Mr. . , . Beeston" is the note with which Aubrey ends his 
account of Shakespeare. That most, if not all, of his account was 
derived from this source appears from a note in vol. i. p. 97. " W. 
Shakespeare — quaere Mr. Beeston, who knows most of him from Mr. 
Lacy. He lives in Shoreditch at Hog-lane within 6 dores north of 
Folgate. Quaere etiam for Ben Jonson." Also id., p. 96. "Old Mr. 
[Beeston], who knew all the old English poets, whose lives I am taking 
from him ; his father was master of the . . . playhouse." 



346 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

was an actor at one of the play-houses, and did act 
exceedingly well."^ Aubrey has a note about Ben 
Jonson, received from Mr. J. Greenhill, that when he 
came home from the Low Countries he "acted and 
wrote, but both ill, at the Green Curtaine, a kind of 
nursery or obscure playhouse, somewhere in the 
suburbes (I think towards Shoreditch or Clarkenwell). 
. . . Then," Aubrey continues, "he undertooke again 
to write a playe, and did hitt it admirably well."^ 
" Now B. Johnson," to return to the account of Shake- 
speare, "was never a good actor, but an admirable 
instructor."^ Then of Shakespeare again : " He began 
early to make essayes at dramatique poetry, which 
at that time was very lowe ; and his playes took 
well. He was a handsome, well-shap't man : very good 
company, and of a very readie and pleasant smooth 
witt." We omit the anecdotes about Grendon, and the 
epitaphs on "Combes, an old rich usurer." "Ben 
Johnson and he did gather humours of men dayly where 
ever they came. . . . He was wont to goe to his native 
countrey once a yeare. I thinke I have been told that 
he left 2 or 300 li per annum there and thereabout to 
a sister. ... I have heard Sir William Davenant 
and Mr. Thomas Shadwell (who is counted the best 
comoedian we have now) say that he had a most pro- 
digious witt, and did admire his naturall parts beyond 
all other dramaticall writers. He was wont to say* that 
he 'never blotted out a line in his life'; said Ben: 
Johnson, ' I wish he had blotted-out a thousand.' His 
comoedies will remaine witt as long as the English 
tongue is understood, for that he handles mores 
hominum. Now our present writers reflect so much 
upon particular persons and Coxcombeities, that twenty 
yeares hence they will not be understood. Though, as 

■^ Aubrey, u.s., ii. 225-6. - /(/. , ii. 12. 

^ Parenthesis following the words " did act exceedingly well," m.5. 

^ Aubrey adds the parenthesis (" B, Johnson's Underwoods."^ 



AUBREY'S ANECDOTES 347 

Ben: Johnson sayes of him, that he had but little Latine 
and lesse Greek, he understood Latine pretty well, for 
he had been in his younger yeares a schoolmaster in 
the countrey." ^ 

Aubrey gives a very full version of the story about 
Mr. and Mrs. Davenant, which seems to have been 
based on the idea of a literary relationship, of which 
instances have been given above.^ It should be added 
that in a sentence which has been erased from his manu- 
script he seems to have been tempted to make the 
insinuation against Mrs. Davenant, which Oldys re- 
futed, when he traced its original to an ancient jest- 
book.^ Davenant's father was a vintner at the Crown 
Inn at Oxford, or the '^Crowne taverne," as Aubrey 
calls it. His mother was beautiful, "and of conversa- 
tion extremely agreable. They had three sons, viz. i, 
Robert, 2, William, and 3, Nicholas (an attorney). 
Robert was a fellow of St. John's College in Oxford, 
then preferred to the vicarage of West Kington by 
Bishop Davenant, whose chaplain he was. They also 
had two handsome daughters — one married to Gabriel 
Bridges (B.D., fellow of C.C. Coll., beneficed in the 
Vale of White Horse), another to Dr. Sherburne 
(minister of Pembridge in Hereford, and a canon of 
that church). Mr. William Shakespeare was wont to 
goe into Warwickshire once a yeare, and did commonly 
in his journey lye at this house in Oxon. where he was 
exceedingly respected. I have heard Parson Robert 
say that Mr. W. Shakespeare haz given him a hundred 
kisses." The last sentence is not in the printed Lives, 
but was added from the manuscript at the Bodleian by 
Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, who said that it had been 

^ Aubrey, i^.s., ii. 226-7. 

^ See stip. p. 47 (Jonson and Serjeant Hoskyns) ; p. 47 and inf. p. 473 
(Field and Chapman). 

'* See the documentary evidence printed in HalUwell-Phillipps, op. cit. , 
pp. 43-50. 



348 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

erased in the last century, but could still be distinctly 
read when placed under a magnifying-glass. "Now 
Sir William would sometimes, when he was pleasant 
over a glasse of wine with his most intimate friends 
— e.g, Sam Butler (author of Hudibras) &c. — say, 
that it seemed to him that he writt with the very spirit 
that Shakespeare, and seemed contented enough to be 
thought his son."^ Samuel Butler seems to have been 
quite of Dr. Beeston's opinion about the affectations and 
coxcombry of the fashionable writers, for in talking of 
Waller, who was also very intimate with Davenant, he 
remarked that Waller's way of ''quibling with sence " 
would soon grow out of fashion and be "as ridicule as 
quibling with words. "^ 



V 

ALLUSIONS BY SHAKESPEARE TO THE BUTCHER's TRADE — 
INCONSISTENCY OF EVIDENCE ON THE POINT 

On the question whether Shakespeare was a butcher- 
boy, it will be observed that the stories told to Aubrey's 
informant and to Dowdall in no way coincide. Beeston 
had heard that John Shakespeare was a butcher, one of 
two in that trade who supplied the town, and that his 
little son helped in the shop and shambles. But Dow- 
dall was informed by his aged guide that the boy had 
been bound apprentice to a master-butcher, obviously 
not his father.^ 

According to the Corporation books, Mr. Ralf 
Cawdrey was a butcher at Stratford during the poet's 
childhood. He was twice High Bailiff, and served in 
other municipal offices. He seems to have been much 

^ Aubrey, u.s., i. 204, sub Sir William Davenant; Halliwell-Phillipps, 
op. cit., ii. 43. 

■^ Aubrey, u.s., i. 136, sub. Samuel Butler. To this Aubrey adds, 
" quod N.B. " ■* Vide supra, p. 332. 



WAS SHAKESPEARE A BUTCHER? 349 

respected in his day ; and he may still be regarded 
with interest as the father, if the story is believed, of 
the 'Mittle boy blue" who helped to carry the trays of 
meat round the town. But Mr. John Shakespeare, 
by the same books, is shown not to have been a butcher, 
but a glover. He was ''gloving" in 1556, and was 
still in the same trade thirty years afterwards. Shake- 
speare seems to allude to the business in The Merry 
Wives of Windsor: — 

** Quidkly, And Master Slander's your master? 
'■'■Simple. Ay, forsooth. 

" Quickly. Does he not wear a great round beard, like a 
glover's paring-knife ? 

^'■Simple. No, forsooth."^ 

People have talked of John Shakespeare's multifarious 
pursuits, suggesting that he farmed in the common-field 
at Asbies, and made up the wool and butchered the 
stock at Stratford ; but, in fact, the farm was under 
lease to a tenant, and he would never have been allowed 
in any case to join such incongruous trades as those 
of a butcher and a glover. He could not keep a regular 
meat-shop while trading in skins, and no one has 
seriously suggested that he worked about as a slaughter- 
man, though such people were classed among butchers. 
The meat trade was stringently regulated by statute, 
and nothing was allowed to interfere with the regular 
official inspection. The killing of calves was the subject 
of constant restrictions, and it is certain that the in- 
spectors would put a stop to anything that might injure 
the veal ; it is almost inconceivable, indeed, that a boy 
would be allowed to play such pranks in the shambles 
as the gossips described. A butcher's business was to 
sell wholesome meat and suet at a profit not exceeding 
a penny in the shilling, not taking his veal too young, 
nor keeping the calf so long that its meat might encroach 

^ Merry Wives of Windsor, i. 4, 18-22. 



350 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

on the steer-beef, and not selling any lean meat as if 
he had got it from the fat stock. He was bound, 
moreover, to keep the horns and hide of every beast till 
all the beef was sold, so that in case of theft the owner 
might identify his property. The Tanners' Act was 
passed in 1530, and was continually renewed; and 
although it became obsolete of late years, it was not 
formally repealed till 1863. The butchers were for- 
bidden by that Act to intermeddle in any way with the 
craft of curriers and tanners, partly because they had 
taken to issuing *' untrue and deceivable leather," and 
partly to prevent them from buying stolen cattle and 
making away with the hides. 

If we do not believe in the killing of calves '4n a high 
style," we need not trouble much about the ''speech"; 
but it is easy to imagine the townsfolk might make up 
the story out of the good Duke Humphrey's fate : 

"And as the butcher takes away the calf 
And binds the wretch and beats it when it strays, 
Bearing it to the bloody slaughter-house, 
Even so remorseless have they borne him hence ; 
And as the dam runs lowing up and down, 
Looking the way her harmless young one went, 
And can do naught but wail her darling's loss, 
Even so myself bewails good Gloucester's case 
With sad unhelpful tears." ^ 

There are a few allusions to the trade which require 
some slight explanation. We have Dick, the butcher, 
who works in his shirt : "Then is sin struck down like 
an ox, and iniquity's throat cut like a calf." " Where's 
Dick, the Butcher of Ashford," asks Jack Cade. " They 
fell before thee like sheep and oxen," he proceeds: 
'* . . . therefore thus will I reward thee, the Lent shall 
be as long again as it is ; and thou shalt have a licence 
to kill for a hundred lacking one."- The English, in 

^ 2 Henry VI. , iii. i, 210-18 ; cf. id., iii. 2, 188-90. 
^ Id., iv. 9, 28-9; iv. 3, 1-9. 



ALLUSIONS TO BUTCHERS' TRADE 351 

their own way, were strict observers of Lent. They 
were very particular about the Friday fast throughout 
the year, and in Lent they abstained from meat on 
alternate days. Even when meat was taken, Mercutio's 
song about the "old hare" shows that some had to 
shift with a mouldy Lenten pie. ^ There is a ballad 
called "Woe worth thee, Lenten," in the volume 
edited by Mr. Wright for the Roxburghe Club, which 
shows how the butcher's trade suffered.'^ It was written 
by some unknown poet about the beginning of Queen 
Mary's reign, and there is some reason to think that 
it had come under Shakespeare's notice. In Twelfth 
Night, for example, Olivia sings : 

" I am as mad as he, 
If sad and merry madness equal be " ; ^ 

and the ballad-writer complains that Lent has exiled 
"jentill Cristimas, with his myrry madnes." In 
Measure for Measure, again, we hear of a beggar that 
smelt " brown bread and garlic," * and of Lent the song 
complains : 

" He wyll mayk many to pyll a garlyke hede, 
Syt dowen and eat hit with a pece off brownie brede, 

Such sorrow ! " 

The butcher, the poulter, and partridger may take to 
their beds or go on a pilgrimage. Farewell to the 
mutton and beef, farewell the bustard and brawn ; " Far 
well, jentill Wat, with thy longe ears." But rich 
people could obtain dispensations, and might deal with 
a butcher duly licensed to sell. "I desire no more," 
says Dick of Ashford : "And, to speak truth," answers 
Jack Cade, "thou deservest no less."^ 

Most of the poet's references to the trade are of a 

^ Romeo and Juliet, ii. 4, 141-6. 

^ Songs and Ballads . . . chiefly of the Reign of Philip a7id Mary, ed. 
Wright, i860, p. 12, No. v., [W]o worthe the, Lenttone. 
"^ Twelfth Night, iii. 4, 15-16. 
* Measure for Measure, iii. 2, 194-5. ^ 2 Henry VI.,u.s., lo-ii. 



352 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

disparaging kind. What says the Hostess? *'Did 
not goodwife Keech, the butcher's wife, come in then 
and call me gossip Quickly? . . . And didst thou not 
. . . desire me to be no more so familiarity with such 
poor people?"^ Launce, again, when he addresses his 
cruel-hearted cur, vows that "he is a stone, a very 
pebble-stone, and has no more pity in him than a dog." ^ 
This looks like a reference to Cock Lorell's Boat, 
with its crew of rascals that supplied the tag about 
''swearing and staring." Among the brigands who 
sail "from Tyburn to Chelsea" is a butcher with two 
bulldogs at his tail : 

" In his hande he bare a flap for flyes 
His hosen gresy upon his thyes 
On his necke he bare a cole tre logge 
He had as moche pyte as a dog-ge. " ^ 

It has been suggested that Shakespeare showed more 
technical knowledge than a boy would have gained by 
peeping into the shambles or watching his mother in the 
kitchen. The instance chosen is Rosalind's metaphor : 

" This way will I take upon me to wash 5^our liver as clean 
as a sound sheep's heart, that there shall not be one 
spot of love In't. "^ 

But this is only another jest upon the "liver vein," the 
"pure idolatry" of which we have heard in Love's 
Labour'' s Lost, with a further suggestion that the lover 
was as silly as a sheep ; ^ and, indeed, Biron himself 
had said : 

"This love is as mad as Ajax : it kills sheep; it kills me, 
I a sheep : well proved again o' my side. " ^ 

Here we will leave the question whether the boy 
Shakespeare was ever employed in a butcher's busi- 

^ 2 Henry IV., ii. i, 101-8. 

" Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii. 3, 10-12. 

^ Cock Lorell's Boat, ed. H. Drury, 1S17, Sig. B. i. 

^ As You Like It, iii. 2, 441-4. 

® Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 3, 74-5. ^ Ibid, y 6-8. 



THE BUTCHER-BOY STORY 



35: 



ness, feeling that the safe course would be to adopt 
Rowe's cautious style, and to say that ''upon his 
leaving school, he seems to have given entirely into 
that way of living which his father proposed to him ; 
and, in order to settle in the world after a family 
manner, he thought fit to marry while he was yet very 
young." ^ 

^ Rowe, in Malone, ed. Boswell, i. 437-8. See also J. O. Halliwell, 
Was Nicholas ap Roberts that butcher's son . . . mho is recorded by Aubrey 
as having- been an acquaintance of Shakespeare . . . and was Shakespeare 
an apprentice to Griffin ap Roberts? Privately printed, 1864. 




2 A 



THE PRODUCTION OF 
"THE TEMPEST" 




THE PRODUCTION OF 
"THE TEMPEST" 



I. HUNTER'S THEORIES, 1839 



I 



(( 



HUNTER S " DISQUISITION ON 
"description of GUIANA 
AND HEADLESS MEN 



THE TEMPEST — RALEGH S 
— DEWLAPPED MOUNTAINEERS 



MR. HUNTER contended that Shakespeare pro- 
duced The Tempest in 1596, as a counterblast 
to Ralegh's description of Guiana.^ The book con- 
tained exaggerated accounts of what the explorers had 
seen and heard. The title was, in Mr. Hunter's opinion, 
" enough to condemn it, boastful and ridiculous": "The 
discoverie of the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of 
Guiana, with a Relation of the great and golden City of 
Manoa, which the Spaniards call El Dorado, and the 
Provinces of Emeria, Arromaia, Amapaia, and other 

^ Joseph Hunter, F.S.A., A Disqtiisiiion on the Scene, Origin, Date, 
etc. etc., of Shakespeare's Tempest, in a letter to Benjamhi Heywood 
Brigll, Esq., 1839, '^^e substance of this tract was reprinted as part 
of the New Illustrations of the Life, etc., of Shakespeare, 1845, vol. i. 
pp. 123-89. 

357 



358 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST 

countries, with their rivers, adjoining ; performed in 
the year 1595 by Sir W. Ralegh, Knight." The book 
is printed in Hakluyt's collection of voyages, and was 
well summarised by William Oldys in his Life of Sir 
Walter Raleigh, from his birth to his death on the 
scaffold.^ The main object of the expedition was to 
reach the White Lake and the golden-roofed city of 
Manoa, in which all the world at that time believed ; 
and there were hopes of finding gold and silver in the 
lower valley of the Orinoco. Ralegh did not go 
further than the mouth of the Caroli River in 
Arromaia ; and here he was told of certain inland 
tribes who were very rich in gold, and of a great 
silver-mine further up the river. He marched over- 
land to see the "strange over-fals of the river of 
Caroli," described by him as a '' wonderfull breach of 
waters," with ten or twelve steep cataracts, every one as 
high over the other as a church tower. Here Ralegh 
and his friends picked free gold out of the quartz with 
their daggers ; ^ and in later days there was much con- 
troversy at home about the value of the specimens. 
Mr. Ward of Stratford noted in his Diary that Mr. 
Sampson, a chemist living in Great Alley Street about 
East Smithfield, told him many things about Sir 
Walter ; on the 4th of January, 1661, he added : " Old 
Sampson, the chymist, told me that he made the aqua- 
fortis with which Sir W. Raleigh did precipitate gold 
to inrich an oar, which he presented to King James, 
proffering to bring the same from beyond sea, but 
could not perform his promise. "^ Howell described 
Sir Walter's last attempt to fulfil his design, in a letter 
to Sir James Crofts: "The news that keeps greatest 

^ Hakluyt, Vojages, etc., i6oo, iii., 627-66, contains Ralegh's Guiana. 
Oldys' life of Ralegh occupies pp. Ixxvi.-cix. of the 1736 ed. of the 
History of the World. 

^ Ralegh, Discovery, etc., in Hakluyt, u.s.., iii. 652. 

** Ward's Diary, pp. 168-9. 



RALEGH'S VOYAGE TO GUIANA 359 

noise here now, is the return of Sir Walter Raleigh 
from his Mine of Gold in Guiana, the South parts of 
America, which at first was like to be such a hopeful 
boon Voyage, but it seems that that Golden Mine is 
proved a mere Chimera, an imaginary airy Mine . . . 
'tis pity such a knowing well-weigh'd Knight had not 
had a better fortune."^ But he acknowledged in a 
subsequent letter to Mr. Carew Ralegh that there was 
a real mine: "for you write of divers pieces of Gold 
brought thence by Sir Walter himself and Captain 
Kemys, and of some Ingots that were found in the 
Governor's Closet at St. Thomas's, with divers Crucibles 
and other refining Instruments."^ The travellers had 
never seen "a more beautiful country, nor more lively 
prospects" than in Arromaia : "The deere crossing in 
every path, the birds towards the evening singing on 
every tree with a thousand severall tunes, cranes and 
herons of white, crimson, and carnation pearching in 
the rivers side, the aire fresh with a gentle Easterly 
winde : and every stone that we stouped to take up, 
promised either golde or silver by his complexion." 
Prince Gualtero, the son of an old chief, went back 
with Ralegh as a pledge of friendship.^ On the return 
voyage towards Emeria other gold mines were dis- 
covered, and from one of the branches of the Orinoco 
they saw what was called the Mountain of Crystal ; it 
looked at a distance "like a white Church-tower of an 
exceeding height," over the top of which a mighty 
river rushed down with "so terrible a noyse and clamor, 
as if a thousand great bels were knockt one against 
another." Antonio Berreo told Ralegh that there were 
diamonds and other stones of great value there, "and 
that they shined very farre off."* At Curiapan they 

^ Epp. Ho-EL, ed. J. Jacobs, 1892, p. 23 (bk. i. § i. let. 4: Lo7idon, 
28 March 1618). 
2 Id., p. 480 (ii. let. 61 : Fleet, 5 May 1645). 
^ Ralegh, 2i.s., pp. 652-6. ■* Id,, p. 657. 



36o PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

found their ships at anchor; "there was never to us 
a more joyfull sight," says Ralegh. They had 
struggled against "the fury of Orinoco," and had 
suffered the extremes of wet and heat, and hunger and 
pain, they had fed on "all sorts of corrupt fruits and 
made meales of fresh fish without seasoning, of Tor- 
tiigas, of Lagartos or Crocodiles^ and of all sorts good 
and bad," and yet no Calentura befell them, "or other 
of those pestilent diseases which dwell in all hot regions, 
and so neere the Equinoctiall line."^ 

The old chieftain had showed Ralegh great plates of 
gold, shaped like eagles, and said that the tribes of the 
interior found the metal in the Lake of Manoa and in 
the beds of several rivers ; "they gathered it in graines 
of perfect gold . . . and that they put to it a part of 
copper, otherwise they could not work it, and that they 
used a great earthen pot with holes round about it, and 
when they had mingled the gold and copper together, 
they fastened canes to the holes, and so with the breath 
of men they increased the fire till the metall ran, and 
then they cast it into moulds of stone and clay, and 
so made those plates and images."^ The same chief 
confirmed the story of the Amazons, with whom 
Orellana had fought on the "River of Maraiion," or the 
Amazons' River, saying that there was a nation of 
female warriors in the provinces of Topago^ within the 
Empire of Guiana : and that, like the bordering nations, 
these women wore plates of gold, which they obtained 
in barter for the "spleen-stones," made of the green 
jade called Saussiirite. "Of these," says Ralegh, "I 
saw divers in Guiana, for every King or Casique hath 
one, which their wives for the most part weare, and they 
esteem them as great jewels."^ La Condamine, in the 
last century, found the same legend prevailing, the 
Indians saying that they inherited the "divine stones " 

1 Id., pp. 659, 660. ^ Id., p. 656. 

3/rf.,p. 638. 



AMAZONS OF GUIANA 361 

from their fathers, who received them from the ''Women- 
living-alone." ^ Later travellers confirmed his report, 
and Humboldt was inclined to believe that a society of 
women might have acquired some power "in one part 
of Guiana. "2 Sir Walter Ralegh had an object in view ; 
*'he sought to fix the attention of Queen Elizabeth on 
the great Empire of Guiana, the conquest of which he 
proposed " ; but the influence of such motives would 
not warrant us in entirely rejecting the tradition. The 
treatise on Guiana concluded with a prayer that the 
King of kings might put it into her heart, who is Lady 
of ladies, to possess it ; " if not," says he, " I will judge 
these men worthy to be Kings thereof, that by her 
grace and leave will undertake it of themselves."^ 
" Had I plantation of this isle, my Lord," says old 
Gonzalo in the play, "... and were the King on't, 
what would I do ? " * The phrase is obscure ; but the 
notion certainly resembles Ralegh's proposal that the 
Queen should allow Guiana to be planted and held by 
her subjects as " under-kings."*" 

A stanza in the Faerie Queene seems to be inspired 
with Ralegh's spirit, when he sought to force England 
into the acceptance of " glory and endless gain " : 

"Joy on those warlike women, which so long 
Can from all men so rich a king^dome hold ! 
And shame on you, O men, which boast your strong 
And valiant hearts, in thoughts less hard and bold, 
Yet quaile in conquest of that land of gold." ^ 

^ C. M. de la Condamine, Rilation abrdgie d'lcn Voyage fait dans 
I'interieur de I Anidrique Mdridionale, 1745, p. 104. 

^ A. V. Humboldt, Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, tr. 
Thomasina Ross, vol. ii., 1852, p. 401. 

^ Ralegh, u.s., p. 662. * Tempest, ii. i, 143-5. 

^ On the system of the encomienda, by which villages "were made 
over as fiefs to the colonists " in the Spanish West Indies, " who stood to 
them in the position of the king, and received their tribute," see E. Arm- 
strong-, The Emperor Charles V., 1902, vol. ii. chap. iv. ; also E. J. Payne 
in Cambridge Modern History, vol. i. , 1902, p. 46. 

^ Spenser, Faerie Qiteene, iv. canto 11, st. 22. 



362 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

We have a glimpse of Eldorado in the picture of bright- 
eyed Mrs. Page. 

"Here's another letter to her: she bears the purse, too; 
she is a region in Guiana, all gold and bounty. I will be 
cheater to them both, and they shall be exchequers to 
me ; they shall be my East and West Indies, and I will 
trade to them both " ; 

and Falstaff bids Robin take care : 

" Hold, sirrah, bear you these letters tightly ; 
Sail like my pinnace to these golden shores."^ 

Ralegh's book, argued Mr. Hunter, must have 
afforded conversation for half London. He felt sure 
that Shakespeare at once seized upon it, either because 
the subject was so popular, or because he wished to 
warn his countrymen against a dangerous delusion. 
"He made this pamphlet," we are told, ''the object 
of his satire, introducing beside general girds at the 
wonders told by travellers, and the absurdities of 
schemes of new settlements, a special attack on what, 
after all, is really the weakest point in Ralegh's pam- 
phlet. "^ We turn at once to the famous passage : — 

" When we were boys, 
Who would believe that there were mountaineers 
Dew-lapp'd like bulls, whose throats had hanging at 'em 
Wallets of flesh ? or that there were such men. 
Whose heads stood out in their breasts ? which now we find 
Each putter-out of five for one will bring us 
Good warrant of."^ 

We shall deal first with the headless, or high- 
shouldered men. Ralegh was informed that to the 
west of the Caroli were "divers nations of Cannibals, 
and of those Ewaipanoma without heads. " He described 
the monsters in a passage, distinguishing the various 
forms of the story. "Next unto Afvi there are two 

^ Merry Wives of Windsor, i. 3, 75-80, 88-9. 

^ Hunter, Ne-w Illustrations, u.s., i. 140. ^ Tempest,- in. 3, 43-9. 



THE HEADLESS MEN 363 

rivers, Atoica and Caora, and on that branch which is 
called Caora, are a nation of people, whose heads appeare 
not above their shoulders ; which though it may be 
thought a meere fable, yet for mine owne part I am re- 
solved it is true, because every childe in the provinces 
of Arromaia and Canuri affirme the same; they are 
called Ewaipanoma, they are reported to have their 
eyes in their shoulders and their mouthes in the middle 
of their breasts." He was also assured that one of 
them had been taken prisoner, and taken to the old 
chief of Arromaia, a few months before. In talking 
over the matter with Prince Gualtero, Ralegh expressed 
doubts about the story and called it ''a wonder" ; but 
the Prince said they were no *' wonder" in his country, 
for they had lately slain many hundreds of his father's 
people. When Ralegh visited Cumana, he met a 
Spanish merchant who had been far up the Orinoco; 
and on hearing that the English had reached the Caroli, 
he asked if Ralegh had seen those Indians, and declared 
that he had seen many of them himself. "Whether it 
be true or no," said Sir Walter, "the matter is not 
great, neither can there bee any profit in the imagina- 
tion : for mine own part I saw them not, but I am 
resolved that so many people did not all combine, or 
forethinke to make the report."^ 

He professed great reliance upon a passage in 
" Mandevile," which came originally out of Pliny's 
Natural History, and had found its way into the col- 
lections of Vincent de Beauvais and Isidore of Seville. 
In modern spelling it runs as follows: "In another 
isle are foul men without heads, and they have eyes in 
either shoulder one, and their mouths are round-shaped, 
like a horse-shoe, amidst their breasts ; in one other isle 
are men without heads, and their eyes are behind in 
their shoulders."^ Ralegh had a special reason for 

^ Ralegh, u.s.^ pp. 652-3. 

2 Mandevile, ed. Halliwell, r866, ch. xix. p. 203. 



364 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

maintaining the authority of the old volume of won- 
ders. "Such a nation," he said, "was written of by 
Mandevile, whose reports were holden for fables many 
yeeres, and yet since the East Indies were discovered, 
we find his relations true of such things as heretofore 
were held incredible."^ Now " Mandevile " had found 
a connection between the occurrence of gold and 
crystal ; and Ralegh had found a great quantity of 
crystal and a little gold. " Upon the rocks of crystal," 
we read, "grow the good diamonds that be of treble 
colour . . . and albeit men find good diamonds in 
India, yet nevertheless men find them more commonly 
upon the rocks in the sea, and upon hills where the 
mine of gold is."^ The question was whether the 
abundance of crystal in Guiana might not be taken as 
a sign of the presence of gold. 

Just before Ralegh's book appeared. Captain Popham 
had found letters in a Spanish prize, describing the 
advance of Berreo's forces to the country of the head- 
less men. We ought to adopt the ambiguous words of 
Othello by calling them 

" men whose heads 
Do grow beneath their shoulders."^ 

The Spaniards arrived at the foot of the range where 
they lived, and sent up messengers with a quantity of 
Jews'-harps to barter for poultry and gold eagles. 
There was no suggestion in the letters that the Indians 
had not mouths of the ordinary kind. The guides sus- 
pected treachery, because the King, called "El Dorado," 
was drinking with his warriors, and was smeared with 
balsam and powdered with gold. In the middle of the 
night a message arrived that the high-shouldered men 
were on the march ; and the Spaniards at once broke 
up their camp and escaped at full speed. These letters 

^ Ralegh, u.s. ^ Mandevile, u.s., ch. xiv. pp. 157-S. 

^ Othello, i. 3, 144-5. 



THE RAYA INDIANS 365 

were printed at the end of Ralegh's book by Order 
of the Council.^ M. de Pauw, writing about 1767, ex- 
plained the matter thus: *'In Caribane there are 
savages with hardly any necks, and their shoulders as 
high as their ears ; this is an artificial monstrosity, the 
children's heads being loaded with heavy weights, so 
that the vertebrce of the neck seem to be almost pressed 
into the shoulder-bones ; they look at a distance as if 
they had their mouths in their breasts ; and it is just 
the occasion for an excitable or ignorant traveller to 
bring out once more the story of the headless men."^ 
The Spanish missionaries compared these men to 
skates and rays, with broad mouths across their bodies ; 
they called them Rayas, and placed them at the mouth 
of the Sipapo, a branch of the Upper Orinoco, in a 
forest-region that has hardly been explored. Humboldt 
tells us of his meeting an old man at Carichana, who 
boasted of having been a cannibal, and of having seen 
the Raya Indians 'with his own eyes.'"^ 

We now come to the mountaineers adorned with 
'' dangling dewlaps" like the snow-white bull in Mena- 
phon.^ They had fleshy pockets below their necks, on 
the model of the pedlar's ''sow-skin bowget." A 
budget was "a pouch or bag," according to the old 
Dictionaries ; and Nash, in Pierce Pennilesse^ talked 
of churls who should be "constrained to carry their 
flesh-budgets from place to place on foot."^ Some 
think that the " flesh - pockets " were copied from 
animals, and Mr. Furness refers us to the description 
of the "pouched Ape."^ It would be quite as easy 
to connect them with Drake's account of the Californian 

^ In Hakluyt, xi.s,, iii. 663-6. 

^ C. de Pauw, Richerches Philosophiques sur les Amdricains, 1768-9, 
i. 152-3. * V. Humboldt, u.s., ii. 317. 

^ Menaphon, ed. Arber, p. 74: "The dangling- dewlap of the silver 
bull." 

' Nash, Pierce Penniless' Supplication, ed. Collier, 1842, p. 48. 

^ Furness, New Variorum Shakespeare, ix. 179. 



366 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

marmot, or " prairie-dog " : "A strange kind of Conies 
. . . under her chinne on either side a bagge, into the 
which shee gathereth her meate."^ Other writers cited 
in the Variorum edition go back to Pliny and Solinus, 
or the History of Quadrupeds , by Conrad Gesner, ''the 
German Pliny," best known in English as Topsell's 
Natural History. These authorities deal with the satyrs 
of mythology, described by Pliny and his follower, 
Solinus, as "having nothing of human-kind about 
them except the shape." These ancient writers did 
not write of "satyrs" as men, though Gesner attributed 
the opinion to Solinus ; but as time went on the 
"satyr" was counted among the savages that dwell 
in the clefts of rocks. Isidore of Seville reminds his 
readers of St. Anthony holding a conversation with a 
poor goat-legged "satyr" in the wilderness, and such 
creatures were sometimes represented as having bags 
of flesh at their throats.^ 

There is nothing to show that Shakespeare was 
referring to any South American fable when he men- 
tioned his "dewlapped mountaineers." Ralegh does 
not speak of any such people. Acarete crossed the 
continent from Paraguay to the Cordilleras, and noticed 
the prevalence of " Goto,'' a slight thickening of the 
throat attributed to snow-water or stagnant air in the 
valleys ; but this was hardly considered a blemish.^ 
M. de Pauw compared the coto to the European goitre, 
known in England as "Derbyshire neck," and men- 
tioned several instances of "spurious rumination " and 
other abnormal effects of the disease observed in 
Switzerland.^ It seems probable that Shakespeare re- 
ferred to a special form of the malady called "the 
Bavarian pouch," which had broken out in the neigh- 
bourhood of Salzburg, and had caused a great migra- 

^ Drake, in Hakluyt, ^l.s., iii. 442. ^ Furness, u.s. 

^ Acarete de Biscay, Voyage up the River de la Plata, etc., Eng. 
trans. 1698, p. :^2- ^ '^^ Pauw, u.s., i. 154-5- 



DEWLAPPED MOUNTAINEERS 367 

tion from the Tyrol and Styria into Germany. Burton 
mentioned the outbreak in his Anatomy of Melancholy 
as follows : " /. Aubanus Bohemus refers that struma, 
or poke, of the Bavarians and Styrians, to the nature 
of their waters, as Munster doth that of the Valesians 
in the Alps.^^'^ The learned John Ray, in his tract on 
The Wisdom of God, considered the effect of great 
numbers of people being born "with a Bavarian poke 
under our chins." ^ And in his Travels through the 
Low -Countries, Germany, etc., he says of the Valley 
of the Mur, in Styria : "We saw in these parts many 
men and women with large swellings under their chins 
or on their throats, called, in Latin, or rather in Greek, 
Bronchocele, by some in English, Bavarian Pokes. 
Some of them were single, others double and treble."^ 
Mr. Hunter proposed to alter the text by reading 
"Each putter-out on five for one" in place of "Each 
putter-out of five for one " / but the change was hardly 
required. The meaning is that every traveller who had 
taken out a five-for-one insurance would warrant the 
existence of headless Indians and pouched mountain- 
eers. Mr. Hunter illustrated the nature of such a 
contract by the case of Mr. Henry Moryson, who paid 
;^400 to receive three times as much if he returned 
safely from Constantinople and Jerusalem ; and another 
example is taken from the confused mass of memoranda 
known as the Commonplace Book of John Sanderson, 
a Turkey Merchant, preserved among the Lansdowne 
MSS. in the British Museum.* The details of such an 
insurance will be found in William West's collection 
of precedents, entitled Symboleographie. The traveller 
paid down a sum of money which the assuring party 
might invest for his own benefit, and the latter gave 

^ Burton, Anat. of Mel. , part i. sect. ii. mem. 2, sub. i (ed. Shilleto, 
vol. i. p. 257). '^ Ray, Wisdom of God, 3rd ed., 1701, p. 236. 

^ Ray, Travels through the Low-Countries, etc., 2nd ed., 1738, i. 121. 
* Hunter, AVw Illustrations, i. 140-1, note. 



368 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

a bond to pay the traveller a larger sum on his return, 
within a stated time, and with proper evidence that he 
had made the voyag^.^ Such wagering contracts were 
fashionable in the time of Elizabeth and James I., but 
died out in the following reign. There is usually some 
humorous exaggeration in the literary references to 
this practice. Thus John Davies, in his forty-second 
Epigram, writes of the dangers of Italy : 

" Lycus who lately hath to Venice gone, 
Shall if he do return have three for one." 

The ^^five-for-one'' in The Tempest may be intended 
as a reference to Every Man out of his Humour^ where 
Jonson's ingenious knight said, "I am determined 
to put forth some five thousand pound, to be paid 
me five for one, upon the return of myself, my wife, 
and my dog from the Turk's Court in Constantinople. 
... If we be successful, why, there will be five-and- 
twenty thousand pound to entertain time withal."^ 



II 

" THE TEMPEST " AND JONSON's '* EVERY MAN IN mS HUMOUR " 
— FLORIO'S "MONTAIGNE" — " LOVE'S LABOUR'S WON" 

Mr. Hunter argued that The Tempest was older than 
Jonson's Every Man in his Htwiottr, and that the last- 
named play was acted in 1597. Jonson's own statement 
was as follows : ''This Comedy was first acted in 1598 
by the Lord Chamberlain's Servants : the principal 
Comedians were Will. Shakespeare, Ric. Burbage, 
etc." It appears by Henslowe's note-books at Dulwich, 
that a play called Humovirs was acted in 1597 at the 
Rose, by the Lord Admiral's Servants, and it is now 

^ Symholeographie, 1605. See Halliwell-Phillipps, Memoranda on 
Shakespeare's Tempest. 

^ Jonson, Every Man out of his Humour, ii. i. 



JONSON'S SUPPOSED ATTACK 369 

allowed on all hands that this was a poor play by Chap- 
man, called The Humorous Day^s Mirth.^ Mr. Gifford 
had made the mistake in his Memoirs of Jonson,'^ and 
Mr. Hunter did not profess to have found any better 
authority ; he maintained that The Tempest was plainly 
satirised in the prologue to Jonson's play, though it is 
difficult to imagine that an author would attack one of 
his principal comedians.^ But there is no proof that 
the prologue was as old as the play. It did not appear in 
the surreptitious quarto of 1601, but was printed in the 
authorised Works of 1616. It contains a reference to 
the Chorus in King Henry V., as "wafting" of the 
audience across the sea ; and it appears to have been 
proved by Mr. Fleay, in his Life and Work of Shake- 
speare, that this historical play was first acted in 1599.^ 
The prologue, moreover, so arrogantly claims to show 
a pattern for all other comedies, that we must suppose 
Jonson to have earned a success before he added his 
self-praise. The squibs, rolled bullets, and "tempestu- 
ous drum " would suit many other tempests beside that 
storm which Shakespeare "taught to roar."^ It was 

1 Henslowe's Diary, ed. Collier, See F. G. Fleay, Biographical 

Chronicle of English Drama, 1891, i. 55. 

^ Memoirs of Jonson, prefatory to one volume edition of plays (1838), p. 8. 

^ Hunter, Disquisition on " Tempest," p. 81 ; New Illustrations, i. 136-9. 

^ F. G. Flea)', Chronicle History of . . . Shakespeare, pp. 204-6. See also 

Biographical Chronicle, u.s., i. 358, in which the date of the revised 

play is taken as April, 1601. 

^ The lines referred to are as follows. Jonson blames the " ill customs 
of the age " : 

" To make a child now swaddled, to proceed 
Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed. 
Past threescore years ; or, with three rusty swords, 
And help of some few foot and half-foot words 
Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars, 
And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars. 
He rather prays you will be pleased to see 
One such to-day, as other plays should be ; 
Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas, 
Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please, 
Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard 
The gentlewomen ; nor roU'd bullet heard 
2 B 



370 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" 

urged, however, that two passages in the prologue must 
have been intended as attacks upon Shakespeare.^ The 
first was the line which, in Mr. Hunter's view, must have 
referred to the ''descent of Juno ": "Nor creaking 
throne comes down the boys to please." We do not 
know that this device was employed in the miniature 
masque of The Tempest; but it is arguable that the 
"creaking throne" was Jonson's description of the 
chariot drawn by peacocks ; it is clear, however, that 
the occurrence of the phrase in Jonson's prologue does 
not in any way determine the date of The Tempest. 
The other passage related to " monsters," and therefore, 
it was urged, could be nothing but an allusion to 
Prospero's "servant-monster." "You that have so 
grac'd monsters, may like men." "Who but Caliban 
can be intended?" asked the critic. An answer might 
be found in Jonson's own comedy ; for young Knowell 
says, "Here within this place is to be seen the true, 
rare, and accomplished monster, or miracle of nature, 
which is all one."^ In the book of Mandevile we find a 
definition: "A monster is a thing deformed against 
kind both of man or of beast, or of anything else."^ 
The word was used in a very general way, to signify 
any birth or living creature degenerating from the 
proper form of its species ; it was used for any large 

To say, it thunders ; nor tempestuous drum 
Rumbles, to tell you when the storm doth come ; 
But deeds, and language, such as men do use. 
And persons, such as comedy would choose, 
When she would show an image of the times. 
And sport with human follies, not with crimes. 
Except we make them such, by loving still 
Our popular errors, when we know they're ill. 
I mean such errors as you'll all confess. 
By laughing at them, they deserve no less : 
Which, when you heartily do, there's hope left then 
You, that have so grac'd monsters, may like men." 

^ The reference to " York and Lancaster's long jars " is more to the 
point than either reference in question. 

' Every Man i7i his Humour, i. 2. 

^ Mandevile, u.s., ch, v. p. 47. 



SHAKESPEARE AND FLORIO 371 

wild beast, and for the tame beasts shown by the 
'^ master of the monsters" at a fair. In the Histoire 
Naturelle des lies Antilles, published by Leers of 
Rotterdam in 1658, we are told to distinguish whales 
from sea-monsters, the latter term taking in all ugly 
and dangerous creatures such as porpoises, manatees, 
sharks, saw-fish, and sword-fish.^ We are therefore at 
liberty to conjecture that Jonson's line referred to mon- 
strosities in general, and was not specially directed 
against Caliban. 

One of Mr. Hunter's chief difficulties lay in the fact 
that Shakespeare had quoted freely from Florio's 
Montaigne. Hardly any of the Essays had been trans- 
lated by John Florio in 1600, and his book was not 
published till 1603. Mr. Hunter suggested that the 
passages used in The Tempest might have been cir- 
culated in manuscript for several years before they 
were published. He supposed that Shakespeare was 
Florio's pupil in French and Italian, or, at any rate, 
knew Florio personally.^ He did not explain why 
Shakespeare should be allowed to ornament his play 
with long extracts from the unpublished work. Mr. 
Hunter quoted the Essays of Sir William Cornwallis 
as direct proof that the whole or part of Florio's trans- 
lation was known some years before 1600. These Essays 
were printed in that year, but had been in private 
circulation for some years previously. We are told that 
Cornwallis was "a pupil of Florio's," but this seems to 
be a matter of inference. He did not name Florio, 
but said that he had seen various passages from Mon- 
taigne translated: ''they that understand both lan- 
guages say very well done"; "it is done by a fellow 
less beholding to nature for his fortune than his wit, 
yet lesser for his face than his fortune. The truth is, 
he looks more like a good fellow than a wise man ; and 

^ L. de Poincy, Histoire naturelle et morale des lies Antilles, 2nd ed. 
1665, p. 190. ^ Hunter, New Illustrations, i. 146. 



372 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

yet he is wise beyond either his fortune or education."^ 
Florio's portrait, by Hole, taken at the age of fifty- 
eight, is prefixed to the second edition of his Italian 
Dictionary, 1 6 1 1 . 

Another difficulty lay in the omission of The Tempest 
from the well-known lists of Shakespeare's plays in the 
" noted school-book" by Meres, called Palladis Tamia; 
or, Wifs Treasury, This book was published in 1598. 
For Shakespeare's excellence in comedy Meres called 
to witness The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy 
of Errors, A Midsummer Nighfs Dream, The Merchant 
of Venice, Lovers Labour's Lost, and another play 
called Lovers Labour's Won.^ Meres seems to have 
been careless about the titles, writing " Errors," '' Love 
Labours Lost," and ''Love Labours Won"; but it is 
only as to the last name that controversy has arisen. It 
is commonly supposed that Dr. Farmer was right in 
identifying this play with AlPs Well that Ends Well; 
but many arguments have been adduced to show that 
it was The Taming of the Shrew, or Much Ado about 
Nothing. Mr. Fleay, in his Life and Work of Shake- 
speare, adopts the view that Love's Labour's Won 
appeared in its first form in 1590, and was altered for 
a Court performance at Christmas, 1596 ; and that in 
the following year, or early in 1598, the play, as finally 
altered, was produced as Much Ado About Nothing.^ 
Mr. Hunter, however, was compelled by his theory to 
assert that Love's Labour's Won was The Tempest under 
another title. According to his argument, however, 
the title should be "Love-labours win," or "Love- 
labours have won." Prospero, it is said, makes trial 
of Ferdinand's love by imposing certain labours. " The 
particular kind of labour is the placing in a pile logs of 
firewood. He serves in this as Jacob did for Rachel, 

^ Cornwallis, Essays, p. 99, quoted by Hunter, u.s., pp. 145-6. 

^ See reprint by Arber, English Garner, (ed. 1897), ii. 98. 

^ ¥\Qa.y, ■^Chronicle History of . . . Shakespeare, 1886, pp. 104, 134, 204-5. 



''LOVE'S LABOUR'S WON" 373 

winning his bride from her austere father by them . . . 
and thus his love labours win the consent of Prospero 
to their union." ^ He quotes the speech of the " patient 
log-man," and Miranda's tender offers of help. 
"There be some sports are painful"; but then the 
hard work is part of the amusement, or the player may 
trim the balance by setting off the work against the 
pleasure. But this mean slavery would be as heavy as 

it is odious. 

"But 
The mistress which I serve quickens what's dead 
And makes my labours pleasures : 

. . . My sweet mistress 
Weeps when she sees me work, and says, such baseness 
Had never like executor. I forget : 
But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours, 
Most busy, lest when I do it. "^ 

In the First Folio there is a comma after bitsy, which 
seems to be a mere clerical error. The Second reads 
^^ least'' for ^^ lest'' : but these forms are sometimes 
treated as equivalent ; in the Charge of a Court-leet, 
for instance, written about 1572, and now in the 
writer's possession, one paragraph begins: "Least 
that easy forgiveness do give other occasion to do 
evil." Theobald's invention of "busy-less" for "not- 
busy " is chiefly remarkable as having been accepted 
by Dr. Johnson, who even printed the word in his 
Dictionary. The meaning of the much-disputed pass- 
age may be that Ferdinand's labours and thoughts are 
personified. The labours are cheered and refreshed by 
the sweet thoughts, and work best in their presence ; 
but they do least when Ferdinand turns from his 
thoughts and resumes the control of the work.^ 

■^ Hunter, u.s., p. 133. He adds: "Not win the willing consent of 
Miranda, as I have been foolishly represented as contending-." 

- See Tempest, iii. i, 1-15. 

^ But see Mr. Morton Luce's useful note in his edition of The Tempest, 
1902, where ample evidence is given on behalf of the First Folio reading. 



374 PRODUCTION OF '^THE TEMPEST" 



III 

LAMPEDUSA — A SUPPOSED ORIGINAL FOR '* THE TEMPEST " — THE 
MAGIC OF "the tempest" — SHAKESPEARE AND ARIOSTO 

Mr. Hunter was convinced that the labours in the 
woodyard indicated the exact situation of Prospero's 
island. The scene of the action, he believed, was 
Lampedusa, a rocky island between Malta and the 
African coast, "not far from the track of a vessel sail- 
ing from Tunis to Naples." The official surveys show 
that it is long, narrow in shape, and about 13I miles 
in circuit; on which Mr. Hunter declared that "in 
its dimensions Lampedusa is just what we may imagine 
Prospero's Island to have been."^ The idea that 
Lampedusa was in Shakespeare's mind may be fairly 
called ridiculous. Mr. Hunter, indeed, attributed the 
"discovery" to Mr. Francis Douce; but Mr. Douce is 
known to have received it from Mr. Rodd, known as 
"the learned bookseller," soon after the appearance in 
1824 of Sicily and its Islands, by Admiral Smyth, then 
Captain W. H. Smyth, r.n. Mr. Douce may have 
accepted the suggestion provisionally, for future con- 
sideration.^ 

Lampedusa had been mentioned by Crusius, other- 
wise Martin Kraus, a Professor at Tubingen, in his 
Tiirco-GrcBcia, published at Basel in 1584. He said 
that the nights at Lampedusa were full of a rabble of 
spectres ; ^ but it has not been suggested that Shake- 
speare was acquainted with his work. Mr. Hunter 
prefers to rely on the sailors' tradition that Lampedusa 
was an enchanted island. Vincenzo Coronelli, Geogra- 
pher to Louis XIV., gave some account of the place in 

^ Hunter, u.s,, p. 160. 

2 Hunter, u.s., ii. 343, in "Corrections and Additions." 

^ Hunter, u.s., i. 161 : " Noctes ibi spectris tumultucsse. " 



HUNTER'S LAMPEDUSA THEORY 375 

his Specchio del Mare Mediterraneo. ^ Alfonso of the Two 
Sicilies gave the island, then only the haunt of a few 
smugglers and vagrants, to his page, Di Caro, with the 
right to build a castle and to exercise baronial jurisdic- 
tion ; and a tower was built, but was never occupied, 
the smugglers having raised enough ''horrible spectres" 
to frighten away this Baron of opera-houffe. The 
Turks were the owners for some time, but were turned 
out in 161 1 by the Spaniards, as appears by Sir Ralph 
Winwood's correspondence.^ Lampedusa belonged 
to the Tommasi family of Palermo from 1667 till the 
time of Captain Smyth's last visit, and afterwards. 
About the year 181 2, Mr. Fernandez, a British subject, 
took a lease of the island, intending to set up a trade in 
cattle and "refreshments" with Malta and Barbary ; 
but when Captain Smyth saw him last, he was living 
with his family near the Grotto in the ravine by Cala 
Croce ; a few labourers, hiding about in the other 
" troglodytic caves," made up the rest of the popula- 
tion. " From the harbour," wrote Captain Smyth, "a 
stout wall, erected at the expense of Mr. Fernandez, 
runs over in a north-west direction to the opposite 
coast, entirely separating the broadest part of the 
eastern end, which is under cultivation, from the rest 
of the island. The western parts are covered with 
dwarf olives, and a great variety of plants, so that a 
great deal of firewood is cut and sent to Tripoli and 
Malta ; and among this profusion there are plenty of 
wild goats, that used to annoy the farm considerably, 
until the erection of the above-mentioned wall ; they still 
find a destructive enemy in the Numidian crane, called 
from its graceful gait, the damsel ; these birds arrive 

^ Venice, 1698, part i. p. 70, quoted by Hunter, ibid. The details fol- 
lowing were borrowed from various sources by Captain W. H. Smyth, 
Memoir descriptive of the resources of Sicily and its islands, 1824. 

^ Carleton to Turnbull, 18 October, 161 1, in Winwood, Memorials, etc. 
iii. 298. 



376 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

in great numbers in May, and delight to revel among 
the legumes."^ Mr. Hunter admits that " Lampedusa 
is a deserted island or nearly so, and was so in the time 
of Shakespeare . . . the Earl of Sandwich, who visited 
the island in 1737, found only one person living 
upon it ; and, going backward to the time of Shake- 
speare, earlier voyagers and geographers give the same 
account."^ He appears to have believed, nevertheless, 
that there was an important trade in pine-logs between 
this deserted island and Malta at the time when The 
Tempest was written. They must have been pine-logs, 
though there are now no pine woods, because Ariel 
was shut by Sycorax into a cloven pine ; and by the 
same reasoning there must have been other timber, 
because Prospero threatened to peg the sprite into the 
cleft of a knotty oak.^ The trade in pine-logs is to be 
inferred from the labours imposed upon the Prince, 
and more especially from the tender words of Miranda : 

*' Alas, now, pray you, 
Work not so hard : I would the lightning had 
Burnt up those logs that you are enjoin'd to pile ! 
Pray, set it down and rest you : when this burns, 
'Twill weep for having wearied you." * 

"The coincidence," we are told, "is very extra- 
ordinary," and the point of resemblance "too peculiar 
to have existed at all," if there was no connection 
between Lampedusa and the island in the play.^ There 
is proof, however, that no fuel trade in dwarf-olives, or 
canes and brushwood, or in pine-logs or other hard 
wood, was carried on between Malta and Lampedusa 
in Shakespeare's time, and certainly not within the 
half-dozen years before or after the production of The 
Tempest. Mr. George Sandys, the traveller, at one time 
Treasurer of Virginia, began a journey to the Levant 

^ Smyth, op. cit., quoted at length by Hunter, Disquisition, p. 24. 
^ Hunter, New Illustrations, i. 160. ^ Tempest, i. 2, 277, 294-5. 

* Id., Hi. I. ^ Hunter, u.s., p. 163. 



THE ISLAND OF LAMPEDUSA 377 

in the year 1610, and arrived at Malta on his return in 
the following year. In 161 5 he published an interest- 
ing volume, entitled A Relation of a Journey begun 
An : Dom : 1610. Foure Bookes, containing a description 
of the Turkish Empire^ etc. The countryfolk in Malta, 
he said, had a kind of Carline, or great thistle, used 
with farmyard manure, which served them for fuel : 
''who need not much in a Clime so exceeding hote." 
For the rest, he says, "A country altogether champion, 
being no other then a rocke couered ouer with earth, 
but two feete deepe where the deepest; hauing few trees 
but such as beare fruite, whereof of all sorts plentifully 
furnished. So that their wood they haue from Sicilia.'"'^ 

We ought to take some brief notice of the other 
alleged coincidences. Captain Smyth said that there 
had been a celebrated recluse, who lived in the grotto, 
"up a ravine in some degree picturesque."^ "The 
Cell of Prospero is made by Shakespeare, perhaps 
accidentally, picturesque, by shading it with line-trees"; 
and these line-trees, or lindens, are described by Hunter 
a little later as a grove in which we may imagine 
"alcoves and bowers of delight in unison with the 
character of the young and susceptible Miranda."^ 

The Sicilians used to call a man who was ready to 
serve any faith by the nickname "Hermit of Lampe- 
dusa." The notion was that the recluse served both 
a chapel and a mosque in his grotto, and lit up for 
Cross or Crescent, according to the flag shown by 
a ship entering the harbour. In this hermit Mr. Hunter 
found "a faint prototype of Prospero." Captain Smyth 
had heard of another legend ; and this, too, according 
to Mr. Hunter, "bears a slight resemblance to the 
subject of this Play." It is, as he points out, the 
subject of Wieland's poem of Klelia und Sinibald. 

■^ Sandys, A Relation, etc, u.s., p. 228. 

^ Smyth, quoted by Hunter, Disquisition, p. 24. 

** Hunter, New Illustratio7is, i. 162, 177. 



378 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

Rosina and Clelia, two ladies of Palermo, were washed 
ashore from a wreck, and on the island they found two 
hermits — Guido and Sinibald — who were glad to re- 
nounce their vows for a double wedding.^ 

Caliban, we are reminded, lived in a cave, like one 
of the labourers engaged by Mr. Fernandez. We have 
another allusion to these caves in the conversation 
between the clowns concerning the wine : 

" Trinculo. O Stephano, hast any more of this? 
" Stephano. The whole butt, man ; my cellar is in a rock by 
the seaside where my wine is hid." ^ 

Coronelli asserted that the Turks, if they found the 
place empty, always left a present. "They are governed 
by a ridiculous superstitious idea that no one would be 
able to go out of the island who did not leave some- 
thing there, or who had the hardihood to take away the 
merest trifle " ; and he added that the Knights of Malta 
went every year with their galleys, and took back to 
Malta the offerings from the chapel for the support of 
their ''Hospital for the Infirm."^ Mr. Hunter compares 
with this "one mode of the operations of Prospero." 
Ariel was asked how fared the King and his followers, 
and he replies : 

" All prisoners, sir, 
In the line-grove which weather-fends your cell ; 
They cannot budge till your release. The King, 
His brother and yours, abide all three distracted 
And the remainder mourning over them, 
Brimful of sorrow and dismay.^'* 

A good account of the grotto was given by Jean de 
Thevenot in the second part of his Voyages au Levant^ 

^ Hunter, u.s., p. 163. " Id., p. 162 ; Tempest, ii. 2, 136-S. 

^ Coronelli, Specchio del Mare. Cf. Crusius, as quoted by Hunter, 
Disquisition, p. 20 : " Eodem modo in altera templi parte a Turcis obla- 
tiones fiunt. Aiunt qui non ofFerat aut aliquod oblati auferat, nee restituit, 
non posse ab insula abire." 

■* Hunter, New Illustrations, i. 161 ; Tempest, v. i, 9-14. 



TRAVELLERS ON LAMPEDUSA 379 

translated into English by D. Lovell in 1687. His vessel 
passed close to Lampedusa in February, 1659. They did 
not land, because the only inhabitants were the rabbits: 
^' N^est hahitee que de connilsJ''' Some on board had 
been in the harbour and had seen the statue and the 
shrine. There was a little chapel with an image of Our 
Lady of the Grotto, venerated by Christians and Turks 
alike. In front of the image stood an altar with money 
on it, but the remaining space was like a marine store. 
Any visitor might deposit money or goods, and he 
would find what he wanted — arms and ammunition, 
biscuit, wine, or oil, anything that he required "down 
to a little needle-case."^ 

Once a year came the Malta galley and took the 
money from the altar to the church of Our Lady at 
Trapani. Both Trapani and its little dependency were 
under the Archbishop of Palermo.^ We may remember 
how Ariosto confesses in the forty-second book of his 
Orlando that he had quite misdescribed the island, as 
Archbishop Fulgoso had justly complained, and that 
the tournament could not have taken place, because 
there was not " one level foot of ground," unless in the 
course of centuries nature might have caused some 
great change by earthquake or flood. ^ 

Thevenot al^o heard a story about a "Christian 
vessel " that could not for a long time be got out of the 
harbour, until at last it was found that a sailor had 
taken stores without leaving the value ; and when 
restitution was made the ship was able to depart.* 

^ J. de Thevenot, Voyage fait a%i Levant, 1664, vol. i. part ii., pp. 537-8. 
^ Trapani was raised to the rank of a bishopric (suffragan to Palermo) 
31st May, 1844 (Gams, Series Episcoporum, 1873, p. 956). Before the 
Saracen conquest there had been a bishop of Drepanum. 
^ Orlando Fur. , canto xlii. 20-1 : 

" I'isola si fiera, 
Montuosa e inegual ritrovi tanto, 
Che non h, dice, in tutto il luogo strano, 
Ove un sol pi^ si possa metter piano," etc. 
^ J. de Thevenot, u.s., p. 538. 



38o PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" 

These legends of the grotto look like a survival from 
ancient folk-lore. The Scholiast in Apollonius Rhodius 
preserved a story told by Pytheas of Marseilles, in 
the fourth century B.C., to the following effect: "In 
Lipari and Stromboli the God of Fire seems to 
dwell, for one hears the roar of flame and a terrible 
bellowing, and it was said from old times that any- 
one might leave unwrought iron there, with some 
money, and next day he would find a sword or any 
implement that he desired."^ In Dr. Thurnam's tract 
on Wayland Smith we find a similar legend about the 
great cromlech at Ashbury : "At this place lived 
formerly an invisible smith, and if a traveller's horse 
had lost a shoe upon the road, he had no more to do 
than to bring the horse to this place, with a piece 
of money, and leaving both there for a time, he might 
come again and find the money gone, but the horse 
shod." A similar story was current in Oldenburg, 
where the smith was known as "the Hiller.'''' Many 
instances of a somewhat similar nature have been 
collected by M. Dupont in H Homme pendant les Ages 
de la Pierre, Behren in Hercynia Curiosa, Professor 
Boyd-Dawkins in Cave-hunting, and Keightley in his 
Fairy Mythology, under Frensham, Surrey, as to leaving 
money at the mouth of a cave, and finding what was 
wanted spread out a short time after. 

Mr. Hunter endeavoured to show how Shakespeare 
became acquainted with Lampedusa. In the first place, 
he pointed out that all the romantic plays, with two 
exceptions, were known to be based on existing stories, 
which in several cases were not of home growth, but 
the work of foreign invention. These exceptions were 
Love's Labour's Lost and The Tempest ; and the fact was 
the more remarkable, because both of them seemed to 

^ Scholia ex Codice Parisiensi in Apollonii Argonauticis iv. 761 (ed. 
Brunck, 1813, ii. 299-300). The scholiast adds : " TaOra ^Tjcri 'Q.vdia.% iv 
7t5s Tr€pi,68i{i^ \4yiov Kai tt)v OdXaaaav ^/ce? ^eiv," 



HISTORICAL REFERENCES 381 

be '* offshoots from a stock of genuine history." The 
discussion of the French King's contract in the former 
play reads as if it were some vague reminiscence of a 
chronicle, and in Mr. Hunter's opinion the story of The 
Tevipest showed some distorted reference to the history 
of Naples and Milan. "But still," he said, "through 
the mist we can discern the real persons who were in 
the mind of the author, and some of the real events 
which are the basis of his fable." ^ One proof is ad- 
duced to show that The Tempest is "a translated, not 
an original, composition." Mr. Hunter refers us to 
Antonio's exaggerated speech about Queen Claribel : 

*' She that is queen of Tunis ; she that dwells 
Ten leag-ues beyond man's life ; she that from Naples 
Can have no note, unless the sun were post — 
The man-i'-the-moon's too slow — till new-born chins 
Be rough and razorable."^ 

" Man's-life," he suggested, was the name of an 
African city which was turned into English by an 
" erroneous principle of translation" ; adding that Leo 
Africanus wrote of a city south of Tunis, known by 
the name of Zod^ which was probably the place in 
question.^ The illustration was somewhat unfortunate, 
because Leo does not mention any town or city called 
either Zoa or Zoe ; but the place at which Mr. Hunter 
pointed was called Zoara, or Zuagha, a coast town in 
Tripoli, nowhere near the city of Tunis, but distant 
about twelve miles from the present capital, and close 
to the ruins of old Tripoli. The other examples of his 
"principle of translation" are equally unimportant. 
He found a place called "Evil-town" in the Travels 
of Mandevile. Then we have "Mars-hill" for the 
Areopagus in the Acts of the Apostles ; but Shake- 
speare, one may observe, would have been more 
familiar with another form ; the reading of the Geneva 

^ Hunter, u.s., p. 167. ^ Tempest, ii. i, 246-50. 

^ Hunter, u.s., p. 166. 



382 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

version being, They ''broght hym into Mars strete," 
with a note, ''This was a place called, as you would 
say, Mars Hill, where the Judges sate."^ Another 
example was taken from The Comedy of Errors, where 
"the Place of Depth " is put forward as a translation 
of Barathrum; but the context is in favour of the 
accepted reading, "place of death and sorry execution, 
behind the ditches of the abbey here."- The last 
example is the most appropriate ; for Villafranca was 
evidently the original of " Old Free-town, our common 
judgement-place," to which the Prince summoned 
Capulet and Montague.^ 

The Tempest, then, is alleged to contain a distorted 
kind of history ; and the same may be said of Love's 
Labour's Lost; and therefore, said Mr. Hunter, "there 
is great reason to conclude that the stories on which 
Shakespeare wrought in both are in one and the same 
book.""* This seems to be the essential fallacy on 
which the whole argument depends. He assumes the 
existence of a single volume without a vestige of proof 
or of any presumption of probability. 

The imaginary book is only a mirage of the brain. 
Shakespeare made mistakes, if he was trying to copy 
the real history of Milan ; he always copied something ; 
and therefore there must have been a prototype con- 
taining the same mistakes. He was quite as much at 
sea in his history of France and Navarre ; and therefore 
he must have taken it from the same source. It follows 
that the volume containing all these blunders, or an 
English translation of it, must have been in Shakespeare's 
possession as early as 1585, or whenever Love's Labour's 
Lost was first produced. No such translation is men- 



■^ Acts xvii. 19. Tyndale, 1534, has " Marsestrete " ; Cranmer, 1539, 
" Marce strete " (texts in English Hexapla, Bag-ster, 1841). 
2 Comedy of Errors, v. i, 12 1-2. 

^ Romeo a7id Juliet, i. i, 109. See Hunter, u.s., p. 166. 
* Hunter, ibid. 



ORIGIN OF THE PLAY 383 

tioned in the Stationer's Registers or elsewhere ; nor, 
indeed, has any proof been found that the original ever 
existed. "In England," said the critic, "it is in vain 
now to hope to find such a volume." He wished that 
those who had access to the popular literature of France, 
Navarre, and Italy would exert themselves to find the 
original volume: "That such a book once existed 
there cannot be a reasonable doubt : that every copy of 
an English translation should have perished, is a 
possibility which the history of the popular literature 
of England will forbid any person from doubting. In 
its native language, however, such a book may still, I 
trust, be existing."^ 

Mr. William Collins, the poet, was next cited as a 
witness to prove that the magic of The Tevipest^ apart 
from the storm, was derived from an Italian romance. 
Now Collins, said Dr. Johnson, was "a man of ex- 
tensive literature." He knew "the learned tongues," 
French, Italian, and Spanish, and had studied all the 
fiction that he could find in those languages. "He 
loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters ; he delighted 
to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze 
on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the 
water-falls of Elysian gardens." The latter part of his 
life, says Dr. Johnson, "cannot be remembered but 
with pity and sadness." For some years before his 
death in 1756 his mind became oppressed by "a general 
laxity and feebleness" ; and, after being some time in a 
lunatic asylum, he was placed under the care of his 
sister at Chichester, where he lived in a very depressed 
condition. Mr. Thomas Warton and some other friends 
used to visit him there ; and they reported that "what 
he spoke wanted neither judgment nor spirit, but a few 
minutes exhausted him."' Among other things, Collins 
told Mr. Thomas Warton that he had seen the novel 

^ Hunter, ^l.s., p. 169. 

"^ Johnson, Lives of Poets, ed. Cunninefham, 1854, iii. 283-5. 



384 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

''which principallyappeared to have suggested the magi- 
cal part of The Tempest.'''' He thought that it was in a 
book, printed in four languages, and entitled Aurelio 
and Isabella; but this, says Mr. Hunter, turns out to 
be a mistake ; " the Aurelio and Isabella I now possess, 
and it has no resemblance whatever to the story of The 
Tempest.'''''^ This romance was written by Juan de 
Flores. The full title, according to Lowndes, ran as 
follows: "The History of Aurelio and of Isabell, 
Daughter of the Kinge of Schotlande, nyewly trans- 
latede in foure languages, Frenche, Italien, Spanishe, 
and Inglishe. Impressa en Anuers, 1556, i2mo."^ 

Mr. Thomas Warton gave some account of the matter 
in his History of English Poetry. He concluded that 
Shakespeare's story was to be found in some old Italian 
novel, or, at any rate, in some book preceding the date of 
The Tempest. " Mr. Collins," he says, " had searched 
this subject with no less fidelity than judgment and in- 
dustry : but his memory failing in his last calamitous 
indisposition, he probably gave me the name of one 
novel for another." Moreover, Mr. Collins had said 
something, had "added a circumstance," leading us 
to think that the novel was about "a chemical necro- 
mancer " with a demon at his call : it might be con- 
jectured that his name was " Aurelio," because alchemy 
dealt with the making of gold.^ Malone rejected 
the conclusion altogether. He had his own theory 
about the storm, and he thought that the story of 
Prospero might owe something to Greene's story of 
Alphonsus ; but the limits were so slight that Shake- 
speare was left in full possession of "the highest praise 
that the most original and transcendent genius can 
claim." Mr. James Boswell, however, reverted to Mr. 
Thomas Warton's opinion, when he edited theVariorttm 

^ Hunter, u.s.^ p. 167. 

^ Lowndes, Bibliographer s Manual^ ed. Bohn, 1864, i. 88. 

^ Warton, History of English Poetry, sect. Ix. (ed. 1840,- iii. 386). 



THE "LOST ORIGINAL" 385 

of Malone ; for Collins, he considered, ''was much more 
likely to have confounded in his memory two books 
which he had met with nearly at the same time, than 
to have fancied that he had read what existed only in 
his own imagination."^ Mr. Hunter called this "a 
just remark";^ but we cannot help agreeing with 
Malone, who had been pressed with the same argu- 
ment, that there is no evidence of the two books having 
been read about the same time. Collins, in short, made 
a mistake, owing to the weakness of his mind, and it 
is impossible to build up a positive argument on what 
he left out or what he might have intended to say. 

Mr. Hunter not only believed in the lost book, but 
felt himself able to describe its authorship and its 
principal contents. It was, he believed, the production 
of a French, Spanish, or Italian writer, but most 
probably the work of an Italian, "to whom the attri- 
butes, physical and metaphysical, of the island of 
Lampedusa were familiarly known, as easily as they 
might be." By the term "metaphysical attributes" he 
may have meant the apparitions and dreams that were 
believed to haunt visitors to the enchanted island.^ 

The unnamed writer was shown to be singularly weak 
in his Italian history; but "through the mist," we are 
told, we can discern the persons who were in his mind, 
"and some of the real events which are the basis of 
his family." It would be more correct to say that The 
Tempest has nothing to do with the history of Naples 
or Milan, except in its use of the familiar names of 
Alonzo and Ferdinand. Massimiliano Sforza, elder 
son of Ludovico il Moro, was turned out of Milan 

^ Malone, ed. Boswell, xv. 6, etc. On p. i6 Malone also mentions 
tentatively Dent's translation of Commines, 1596, pp. 293-4, where 
Alfonso II. of Naples is mentioned in connection with the designs of 
the Sforzas against his house. He suggests that Prospero Colonna may 
have furnished the suggestion for " Prospero," while Miranda may have 
arisen from the mention of a lord of Mirandola. 

^ Hunter, u.s.^ p. 167. ^ Hunter, Ne'w Illustrations, p. 165. 

2 C 



386 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

by the French after the battle of Marignano in 151 5 ; 
his brother, Francesco Sforza, after the battle of Bicocca 
in 1522, began his disturbed career as Duke of Milan. 
There is nothing like this in The Tempest, except the 
bare old news of Charles the Wrestler in As You 
Like It: — 

" There is no news at the court, sir, but the old news : that 
is, the old duke is banished by his younger brother the 
new duke."^ 

Alfonso of Naples gave up his kingdom to his natural 
son Ferdinand and retired to Sicily, where he gave 
himself up to "study and religion," but died after a 
few months. We find nothing in the story to remind 
us of King Alonzo and the wily Sebastian. 

The anonymous novelist is presented to us as an 
adept in the "Chaldean Philosophy." Mr. Hunter con- 
sidered that this philosophy came "from the very 
depths of human civilization." He appears to have 
been ignorant of the history of Chaldean magic and 
the Grccco-Egyptian magic, which have become familiar 
subjects since the essay was written. His list included 
in one class "Jannes and Jambres, who withstood 
Moses," King Solomon, the Three Kings from the East, 
Simon Magus, and those that used "curious books" at 
Ephesus. He refers to the mediaeval fancies about the 
enchanter Virgil ; but it is difficult to follow the track 
of the argument. "There are then," he summed it up, 
"a crowd of persons of obscure name in the countries 
of modern Europe, and especially about the shores of 
the Mediterranean, who were professors of this so- 
called philosophy. . . . The Adepts in this philosophy 
were supposed to hold communication with the spiritual 
world, and they had their servant-spirits, whom they 

^ As You Like It, i. i, 103-5. -^ ^^^s fanciful, if equally inconclusive, 
correlation of fact with fiction would be to recall the usurpation of 
Ludovico il Moro in 1494 and its sanction by the King of the Romans, 
Maximilian I. 



HUNTER ON CHALDEAN PHILOSOPHY 387 

bound in stones or stocks, from which they knew how 
to evoke them when their services were needed. Fallen 
Angels they were who had lost their first estate." 
Prospero, of course, is taken as an impersonation of 
the true adept, and Ariel as the chief of the ''servant- 
spirits " under his command.^ We are informed that 
The Tempest contains a good deal that is Hebraistic, 
"as might be expected when there was so much of the 
Chaldee philosophy." "The measure of time, 'till 
new-born chins are rough and razorable,' is quite 
Hebraistic."^ In one case we gain a direct insight 
into the novelist's mind, if we can only accept these 
Babylonian reasonings. Caliban's form, not his words 
or acts, but his shape and figure, was of "Oriental 
origin," whether Philistine, Hebraist, or Chaldee. As 
to form, we are told, Caliban is the god of the 
Philistines, Dagon the Fish-god, who had the body 
of a fish, and the head, hands, and feet of a man. 
" Nothing can be more precise than the resemblance : 
the two are, in fact, one, as far as form is concerned. 
Caliban is thus a kind of tortoise, the paddles expand- 
ing in arms and hands, legs and feet." Does not 
Prospero himself say, "Come forth, thou tortoise"? 
This form, Mr. Hunter assures us, is consistent with 
everything that Caliban says or does; but "it was a 
difficult figure to manage on the stage," as Shakespeare 
must have known full well. Why, then, should he 
have chosen it, if he were not "under constraint"; 
in other words, the figure was "prescribed" by the 
novelist, whose mind had been occupied by that Fish- 
god whose head and hands were cut off upon the 
threshold at Ashdod.^ Mr. Hunter referred his readers 
to Origines Hebrcece, the Antiquities of the Hebrew 
Republic, by Thomas Lewis, 1724-5, and to Selden's 

^ Hunter, u.s., pp. 179-81. 

'■^ Id., p. 183. Ariel (p. 181) is connected with the Hebrew name given 
by Isaiah (xxix. i) to Jerusalem ! ^ Hunter, u.s., pp. 183-5. 



388 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

treatise on the Syrian gods in the second volume of 
his works; the latter was published separately in 1617 
under the title De Diis Syriis. An extract is added 
from Selden's letter to Jonson, written in 161 5, on the 
rule against men wearing women's apparel, in which 
the shape of Dagon was discussed, and legends from 
Berosus added, about " Oannes," the Fish-god of the 
Euphrates, ''with the body of a fish, and one of the heads 
like a man's head, and feet in its tail."^ Mr. Hunter's 
conclusion from these vague traditions appears in the 
sentences following. "The similarity of Caliban and 
Dagon is confined to form. I hold it to be certain, 
first, that the form was not an invention of the English 
poet ; secondly, that he found it in the story on which 
he wrought in this play ; and thirdly, that the original 
constructor of the story was versed in Chaldee an- 
tiquities, and thence drew this strange and unnatural 
and eminently undramatic compound." ^ Mr. Hunter 
ascribed all Prospero's magical powers to the influences 
derived from Babylon : " He calls up splendid visions : 
at his command the air is filled with sweet music, or 
with the sounds of hound and horn."^ But one may 
remember that charms of this kind were given to brave 
Owen Glendower, without reference to any Eastern 
philosophy : — 

" Those musicians that shall play to you 
Hang in the air a thousand leagues from hence, 
And straight they shall be here : sit, and attend."* 

Prospero raises or quells the storm, and plucks up 
great trees ; << Graves at my command 

Have waked their sleepers " ; ^ 

but Mr. Hunter acknowledged that this "rough magic" 
was borrowed from the Medea of Golding's translations 
from Ovid.^ The Roman had addressed the spirits of 

•* Hunter, ibid. (note). ^ Ibid. 

^ Id., pp. 180-1. ^ I Henry IV., iii. i, 226-8. 

° Tempest, v. i, 48-9. '^ Hunter, n.s., ii. 162 (in essay on Macbeth). 



PROSPERO'S MAGIC POWERS 389 

the night, of the mountains, woods, and waters ; 
Golding could not understand that to every object 
corresponded a spiritual essence, or genius ; and he 
solved the difficulty by addressing the incantation to 
the familiar fairies, or elves. ''Ye aires and winds, yee 
elues of hilles, of brooks, of woods alone. Of standing 
lakes, and of the night approch ye euerichone."^ 
Shakespeare added the fairies dancing at the margin of 
the shore, the tiny forms that tread the grass into 
"green sour ringlets," or after curfew steal out to set 
mushrooms for their midnight crop. By the help of 
such frail creatures, ''weak Masters of elemental 
force," Prospero had performed his mighty tasks : — 

" I have bedlmmed 
The noon-tide sun, called forth the mutinous winds, 
And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault 
Set roaring war : to the dread rattling thunder 
Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak 
With his own bolt ; the strong-based promontory 
Have I made shake and by the spurs plucked up 
The pine and cedar : graves at my command 
Have waked their sleepers, oped and let 'em forth, 
By my so potent art. "^ 

The witchcraft of Sycorax is derived from an equally 
classical source. The witch of Algiers is a copy of the 
Mussylian sorceress who came at Queen Dido's call. 
Shakespeare found her attributes in the translation 
of the fourth ^neid by Thomas Phaer. She could 
shift the trees of the forest, or turn the flow of the 
rivers, and alter the courses of the stars ; and Sycorax 
was as strong a witch : 

"That could control the moon, make flows and ebbs. 
And deal in her command without her power. "^ 

The meaning appears to be that Sycorax, like the 
witches of Thessaly, could make the moon come down, 

^ A. Golding, The xv. Bookes of P. Ovidius Naso, etc., 1584, bk. vii. 
p. 90. ^ Tempest, v. i, 33-50. ^ Id,, v. 1, 270-1. 



390 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

and fill the estuaries, and by authority from below 
could do feats beyond any human power. 

The office of Ariel was treated by Mr. Hunter as if 
the airy spirit were an ordinary ''familiar." There 
was a common superstition that a witch or conjurer was 
attended by a demon in the form of a fly, or some such 
creature ; and Paracelsus used to boast that he carried 
a devil in the pommel of his sword. Mr. Hunter 
discusses the nature of the call by which the "familiar" 
was summoned. He found several instances in The 
Tempest, "The words," he said, "are such as Lesbia 
might have used to her sparrow, or an Eastern beauty 
to a bird of paradise : ' Come, away. Servant, come 
. . . approach, my Ariel, come.' " In the fourth act 
we have it again : " Now come, my Ariel, appear ; and 
pertly"; and again, "Come with a thought: Ariel, 
come ! " " The call," he adds, " is introduced on other 
occasions, and is always in harmony with the delicate 
form of Ariel, in which the idea of a bee perhaps rather 
predominates than that of any other living thing." ^ 
This may be founded on some notion that Ariel was to 
live "under the blossom," like the elf in his "Bee- 
song," instead of returning to his elemental home.^ 
But in the play itself the situation was far more compli- 
cated. When Prospero arrived, the sprite was an exile 
from those airy confines. Sycorax had fitted him with 
a body with nerves susceptible of pain ; and had thrust 
him, thus materialised, into the rift of a cloven pine. 
The air was full of shrieks and groans, repeated "as 

fast as mill-wheels strike " : 

" Thy groans 
Did make wolves howl and penetrate the breasts 
Of ever angry bears : it was a torment 
To lay upon the damned, which Sycorax 
Could not again undo : it was mine art, 
When I arrived and heard thee, that made gape 
The pine and let thee out." 

^ Hunter, u.s., pp. 182-3. ^ Tempest, v. i, 93-4. 



THE CHARACTER OF ARIEL 391 

Sycorax could only perform the feat by the help of her 
"potent ministers," and when she died they could not 
undo their work. But Prospero's power was of a higher 
rate. "Mine art," he says, "let thee out. Ariel, I 
thank thee. Master " : 

" Pros. If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an oak 
And peg" thee in his knotty entrails till 
Thou hast howl'd away twelve winters."^ 

It was in a lost Italian story, as Mr. Hunter imagined, 
that Shakespeare found his isle of Lampedusa ; and 
being thus "carried there," must have cast about for 
more information, and was thus, perhaps, led to 
Ariosto. The Orlando Furioso had been turned into 
English verse by Sir John Harington in 1591 : and 
in it Shakespeare might find the description of a ship- 
wreck "in the seas about the very group of islands 
of which Lampedusa is one." Mr. Hunter proposed 
to show that the passage had been read by Shakespeare 
shortly before preparing the opening scene of The 
Tempest. His object was to show that this scene was 
designed to exhibit in dramatic action "the same 
spectacle which Ariosto had presented in his epic."^ 
There is nothing strange in the general idea, though it 
is difficult to accept some of the so-called coincidences. 
Some of them are explained by the fact that Harington 
had served at sea, and tried to explain Italian terms 
of art by English phrases. Mr. Hunter had found 
similarities which he would not have expected " in two 
perfectly independent compositions."^ In both storms 
we read of the master and the master's whistle ; and it 
seemed to him improbable that the "whistle" would 
occur to the minds of independent writers.* In both 
narratives the sails are struck, and in both there is a 
" falling to prayer " at the end. Ariosto's ship sprang 

^ Id.t i. 2, 274-96. ^ Hunter, u.s., pp. 169-70, 173. ^ Id.^ p. 173. 
* See Tempest, i. i, and Orlando Ficrioso, tr. Harington, 1591, bk. xli. 
stt. 8-18. 



392 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" 

a leak ; and old Gonzalo made a jest about leakiness. 
Even more remarkable, it is said, was the contempt of 
rank and royalty in both ; " What care I for the name 
of King : get out of my way, I say." But this is only 
a paraphrase of the Boatswain's, who will be patient 
when the sea is so : 

" Hence ! What care these roarers for the name of King-? 
To cabin ! silence ! trouble us not." 

In the Orlando we are told that "of King nor Prince 
no man takes heed or note " ; but the " roarers " in The 
Tempest are only the noisy waves. Some of the verbal 
"coincidences" deserve very little attention. The 
"cry," when the ship was dashed to pieces, did knock 
against Miranda's "very heart"; the comment is that 
the words of Ariosto seem to have been ringing in the 
poet's ears : 

" 'Twas lamentable then to hear the cries, 
Of companies of every sort confused, 
In vain to heaven they lift their hands and eyes, 
Making" late vows, as in such case is used," ^ 

When Miranda was told the story of her father's exile, 
" O the heavens! " she cried, 

"What foul play had we, that we came from thence. 
Or blessed was't we did ! " 

And her father answers : 

" Both, both, my g-irl : 
By foul play, as thou say'st, were we heaved thence. 
But blessedly holp hither. "^ 

Mr. Hunter suggested that Shakespeare got these 
phrases from the fortieth book of the Orlando, where 
Agramant was driven by another storm to a harbour 
where he found an ally who promised assistance : 

"Agramant praised much this offer kind. 
And called it a g^ood and blessed storm. 
That caused him such a friend as this to find. 
And thanks him for his offer. "^ 

^ Tempest, i. 2, 8-9; Harington, xli. 20. ^ Tempest, i. 2, 59-63. 

^ Harington, xl. 47. Hunter quoted the first line inaccurately. 



SHAKESPEARE AND HARINGTON 393 

The hermit, again, who helped Ruggiero to climb 
the rock, could "allay " the waves with the sign of the 
cross; and Miranda begged her father to ''allay" the 
wild waters, if he had caused them to roar.^ There is 
nothing singular in the word, which was often used by 
Shakespeare in a similar sense ; but Mr. Hunter argued 
that a word need not be peculiar to serve " as an index " 
to a later author's train of thought : " A peculiarity in 
its use, or an application of it to the same or similar 
circumstances, may do as well." ^ The nearest approach 
to a real coincidence is to be found by comparing the 
flames in Ariosto's storm with the fires of Ariel in The 
Tempest; but Shakespeare was probably familiar with 
an account of Magellan's voyage, which would supply 
him with all the necessary information.^ 

The slightest part of the argument lies in the com- 
parison of passages from Shakespeare and Harington, 
very much to the disadvantage of the former. When 
the young lord-in-waiting was consoling King Alonzo, 
he gave a minute account of the prince's escape from 
drowning : — 

" I saw him beat the surges under him, 
And ride upon their backs ; he trod the water, 
Whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted 
The surge most swoln that met him ; his bold head 
'Bove the contentious waves he kept, and oar'd 
Himself with his good arms in lusty stroke 
To the shore, that o'er his wave-worn basis bow'd, 
As stooping to receive him." ^ 

What is called the ''corresponding passage," in the 

^ Tempest, i. 2, 2 ; Haring-ton, xliii. 178, where the word is "still," 
not "allay." "^ Hunter, u.s., p. 173. 

^ Pig-afetta, Primo Viaggio intorno al Gloho, included in Ramusio, 
Raccolta delle Navigazioni e Viaggi, 1588. A French summary of Piga- 
fetta's description had appeared in 1534. A translation of this was added 
by Richard Willes to his edition of Richard Eden's Historie of Travayle 
in the West and East Indies, 1 577. 

■^ Tempest, ii. i, 114-21. 



394 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" 

forty-first book of the Orlando, shows us how Ruggiero 
'* above the water keeps his head " : 

*' With legs and arms he doth him so behave, 
That still he kept upon the floods aloft, 
He blows out from his face the boistrous wave 
That ready vii'as to overwhelm him oft."^ 

According to Mr. Hunter, the passage in The Tempest 
is laboured, "and betrays marks of effort," as if the 
writer was attempting "to rival a great originaL"^ 
"We have," he said, "a similar correspondence in 
another of the laboured passages in The Tempest, in 
which he opens to view the guiltiness of the conscience 
of Alonzo " : 

'* Methought the billows spoke and told me of it ; 
The winds did sing it to me, and the thunder, 
That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced 
The name of Prosper : it did bass my trespass. 
Therefore my son i' th' ooze is bedded, and 
I'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded 
And with him there lie mudded." ^ 

This, again, is said to be written with the same strained 
effort, " produced, perhaps, by the attempt to rival and 
surpass the earlier poet." * 

1 Harington, xli, 22. ^ Hunter, w.5. , 175. 

^ Tempest, iii. 3, 96-102, 

^ Hunter, u.s. The passage which called forth this "attempt" on 
Shakespeare's part is singularlyweak in comparison with the "attempt" 
itself. 



II. THE MARRIAGE OF THE EARL OF 

ESSEX, AND JONSON'S ^'MASQUE 

OF HYMEN," 1606 

I 

Essex's marriage — errors as to exact nature of cere- 
mony — marriage of lady ESSEX TO ROCHESTER, 1613 
— ACCOUNT OF THE CEREMONIES AND MASQUES 

ON Sunday, the 5th of January, 1606, a strange 
wedding was celebrated in the palace of White- 
hall. The King and Queen, and all the great people 
of the court, were assembled to see two children united 
in holy matrimony. The bride was a girl under 
thirteen, and the bridegroom about a twelvemonth 
older. The object of the alliance was to make some 
amends for the judicial murder of Queen Elizabeth's 
favourite, and for the imprisonment of his friend. Lord 
Southampton, to attach the remaining ** Essex faction " 
to the King's side, and incidentally to please more than 
one powerful minister. 

The bride. Lady Frances Howard, was the younger 
daughter of Thomas, Earl of Suffolk, then Lord 
Chamberlain and afterwards Lord High Treasurer. 
She was a pretty child, and became renowned for her 
good looks before she was seventeen. Arthur Wilson, 
her husband's ** gentleman," wrote a history of the 
reign, and said that she grew to be "a beauty of the 
greatest magnitude in that horizon . . . and every 
tongue grew an orator at that shrine."^ 

1 Life and Reign of James I. , printed in Kennett's Compleat History 
of England {i']o6), vol. ii. p. 686, col. 2. 

395 



396 PRODUCTION OF '<THE TEMPEST" 

The boy was Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex and Eu, 
Viscount Hereford and Bourchier, and Baron Ferrers 
of Chartley in the county of Salop, Bourchier, and 
Louvain, his father's honours having been restored 
when the new reign began ; ^ and in course of time 
he attained a greater place as His Excellency the 
Captain-General of the Armies of the Parliament. 
King James disliked him for his sour looks ; perhaps 
he was a little afraid of him. He once said, "I fear 
thee not, Essex ! if thou wert as well beloved as thy 
father, and hadst forty thousand men at thy heels. "^ 
The Earl had passed quickly through Eton and Merton, 
and was made Master of Arts when the King visited 
Oxford in the summer of 1605.^ He must have for- 
gotten all about his degree, says his ''gentleman," "or 
he would not have received the same honour about 
thirty years afterwards."^ While he was still under 
Sir Henry Savile's tuition at Merton, young Essex 
showed a great love for serious study ; but he also 
excelled in outdoor accomplishments, especially at 
fencing and pike-practice, "at riding the great horse," 
and at tilting or running at the ring. 

A notice of the marriage is preserved in the Old 
Cheque-book of the Chapel-Royal at Whitehall, now 
kept with the records of the Chapel-Royal, St. James's 
Palace. "The younge Earle of Essex was maryed to 
Frances Howard, daughter to the Earle of Suffolke, 
Lo. Chamberlaine, in the Kinges Chappell at White- 
hall, the 5 or 6 of January, 1605,^ (the Kinges Majestic 
givinge her in maryage), wher was paid for fees to the 
Deane of the Chappell, he maryinge them, 10 li, and 
to the gentlemen of the Chappell then ther attendinge 
5 li ; which mariage was solemnized in the third 

1 i8th April, 1604. 2 Wilson, ii.s., p. 747, col. 2. 

•^ 30th August, 1605. Wood, Ath. Ox., ed. Bliss, 1813-20, iii. 190. 

"* In August, 1636, Id., iii., 192. 

•' 5th January, 1606, N.S. 



NOTICES OF THE WEDDING 397 

yeare of the Raigne of our Soveraigne Lord Kinge 
James." ^ 

An interesting account of the marriage is preserved 
among the Cottonian MSS. It was written to Sir 
Robert Cotton by Mr. John Pory, the friend of Richard 
Hakluyt. Mr. Pory was a traveller and a scholar. He 
received much praise for his spirited translation of Leo 
Africanus. He was Member of Parliament for Bridge- 
water from 1605 to 1610, and in 1619 was made Secretary 
to the Colony of Virginia. *' Ever since your departure 
I have been very unfit to learn any thing, because my 
hearing (which Aristotle calls Sensus Eruditionis) hath, 
by an accidental cold, been almost taken from me ; 
which makes me very unsociable, and to keep within 
doors ; yet not in such a retired fashion but that I have 
seen the Mask on Sunday, and the Barriers on Monday 
night. The bridegroom carried himself so gravely and 
gracefully as if he were of his father's age.^ He had 
greater gifts given him than my Lord Montgomery 
had ; his plate being valued at ;^3,ooo, and his jewels, 
money, and other gifts at ;^i,ooo more."^ Sir Philip 
Herbert, brother of William, Earl of Pembroke, had 
married Lady Susan de Vere in 1604. The entry in the 
*'01d Cheque-book" runs as follows: ''Sir Philipp 
Harbert, Knight, was maryed to Susanna Vere, daugh- 
ter of the Earle of Oxford, in the Chappell at White- 
haule, 1604, wher was payd for fees to Mr. Deane of the 
Chappell X li. and to the gentlemen of the sayd Chap- 
pell V li., December the 27th in the second yere of the 
reigne of oure Sovereigne Lord Kinge James. "^ Sir 
Philip Herbert was created Baron Herbert of Shurland 

1 The Old Cheque-Book . . . of the Chapel Royal, ed, E. F. Rimbault, 
1872 (Camden Society), p. i6i. 

2 The second Earl of Essex, born loth November, 1566, executed 
25th JFebruary, 1601, would have been in his fortieth year had he lived to 
see his son's marriage. 

^ Text in Nichols, Progresses of James I. , ii. 2)2>- 
* Rimbault, op. cit, p. 160. 



398 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

and Earl of Montgomery on the 4th of May, 1605, and 
succeeded his brother, William Herbert, in the Earldom 
of Pembroke in 1630. Mr. Pory next proceeds to 
describe the "Masque of Hymen," presented on the 
evening of the wedding, but we postpone that part 
of his letter till we come to Ben Jonson's own stage- 
directions. 

Another notice of the marriage is found in the title 
of the Masque of Hymen, as published by Ben Jonson 
in its first edition: ''Hymenaei, or the Solemnities of 
Masque and Barriers, Magnificently performed on the 
Eleventh and Twelfth Nights from Christmas, at 
Court : to the auspicious celebrating of the Marriage- 
union betweene Robert Earle of Essex and the Lady 
Frances, second daughter of the most noble Earle of 
Suffolke, 1605-6. The Author, B.J." After the con- 
viction of the Earl and Countess of Somerset for the 
murder of Sir Thomas Overbury in 1613, the title was 
changed, and the piece appears in Jonson's collected 
works as Hymenaei, or the Solemnities of Masque and 
Barriers at a Marriage. 

It has been supposed that The Te7npest was connected 
in some way with this marriage, ever since Holt pub- 
lished his essay on the play in 1749.-^ Its miniature 
masque was obviously written in honour of some noble 
alliance ; that appears from the love-scene in the wood- 
yard, the promise of a royal wedding at Naples, the 
chanted blessings of the great goddesses, united, as we 
are twice told, ''a contract of true love to celebrate." ^ 
The Masque, said Holt, was "a compliment intended 
by the poet, on some particular solemnity of that kind ; 
and if so, none more likely, than the contracting the 



^ An Attenipte to rescue that aunciente, English poet, and play-'wrighte, 
Maister Williau?>ie Shakespere ; from the maney errours, faulsely charged 
on him, by certaine new-fangled wittes . . . by a Gentleman formerly of 
Greys-Inn, 1749. 

'^ Tempest, iii. i ; v. i, 306-9; iv. i, 84 and 132-3. 



HOLT'S ESSAY ON THE PLAY 399 

young Earl of Essex, in 1606, with the Lady Frances 
Howard." Holt was of opinion that the play was a 
testimony of Shakespeare's gratitude to Lord South- 
ampton, "a warm patron of the Author's, and as 
zealous a friend to the Essex family." It is true that 
Holt continually wavered between the ideas of a be- 
trothal and an actual marriage. He selected the year 
1610 as the time when the union was complete. Then 
he gave his readers leave to accept the theory that The 
Tempest was written for the wedding of the Princess 
Elizabeth to the Prince Palatine on Valentine's Day, 
1613. Next he seems to have forgotten all about ''the 
Palsgrave and our Lady Bess " ; for he ascribes the 
play to some time in the year 1614, before the produc- 
tion of Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, though the play 
was known, at any rate, to have been acted before 
the Princess in the previous year.^ 

Malone followed Holt in his mistake about betrothal 
and marriage. The bride and bridegroom were of 
lawful age and their matrimony was duly solemnised. ^ 
Lord Essex and his child-wife were too young to set up 
a home, and it was arranged that she should live with 
her mother, while he travelled with *'a guide or tutor" 
through France and Germany. He stayed abroad for 
about four years. Malone believed that he came home 
in 1609, on the authority of some of the depositions in 
the divorce proceedings ;^ but most of the biographers 
agreed with Holt in thinking that he returned in the 
following year. In writing on the chronological order 
of the plays, Malone explained his views as follows : 

^ Holt, op. cit., pp. 17, 62, 67. 

^ In a pamphlet containing the divorce proceedings, published by 
Curll in 171 1, the first declaration of the Lady Frances Howard is "that 
she and Robert Earle of Essex were Maried by Publicke Rites and 
Ceremonies in January 1606 " (p. i). To this the Earl of Essex an- 
swered in the affirmative (p. 5). Arthur Wilson, u.s., amply bears out 
the fact of marriage as opposed to betrothal. 

" Malone's Shakespeare, ed, Boswell, 1821, xv. 418. 



400 PRODUCTION OF *'THE TEMPEST" 

''Mr. Holt conjectured, that the masque in the fifth 
(sic) Act of this comedy was intended by the poet as 
a compliment to the Earl of Essex, on his being united 
in wedlock, in 1611, to Lady Frances Howard, to 
whom he had been contracted some years before. Even 
if this had been the case, the date which that commen- 
tator has assigned to this play (1614,) is certainly too 
late : for it appears from the MSS. of Mr. Vertue that 
the Tempest was acted by John Heminge and the rest 
of the King's Company, before prince Charles, the 
lady Elizabeth, and the prince Palatine elector, in the 
beginning of the year 1613." Mr. Boswell, in his 
notes to the Varwrttm edition, added for himself : 
"Mr. Holt {Obsewatmis on ^ The Tempest,'' p. 67) im- 
agined that Lord Essex was united to Lady Frances 
Howard in 1610 ; but he was mistaken : for their union 
did not take place till the next year." In his next note 
he refers again to the words "contracted some years 
before." He gives the date as "January the 5th, 
1606-7," which must be wrong, whatever style of 
reckoning be adopted; and proceeds to say, "The 
Earl continued abroad four years from that time ; so 
that he did not cohabit with his wife till 1611."^ In his 
Essay on the origin and date of The Tempest, printed 
in 1808, and appended to the play in the Variorum 
edition, Malone once more spoke of the marriage of 
the Earl and Lady Frances, "to whom he had been 
betrothed in 1606."^ 

The marriage, as we have seen, was solemnised in 
1606. It was annulled on the 25th of September, 1613, 
by a Commission of Delegates, after various scandalous 
and collusive proceedings. When Essex returned from 
the Continent, he found his wife entangled in an in- 
trigue with Robert Carr, Viscount Rochester, the all- 
powerful favourite. On the 4th of November, Carr was 
created Earl of Somerset, and was married to Lady 

^ Id. , ii. 466 and note, - ^ Id. , as note 



REMARRIAGE OF LADY ESSEX 401 

Frances on December 26th. The ''Old Cheque-book" 
contains the form of the banns published on the 19th 
of December, the 21st of December, and Christmas 
Day: "I aske the banes of matrimony betweene the 
Right Honorable personages, Roberte Earle of Somer- 
sett, of the on[e] partie, and the Ladie Francis Howard, 
of the other part : if any man can shewe any just cause 
why these may not lawfully be joyned together, lett 
him speake." Among the entries of royal and noble 
marriages we find the following note : ''After that the 
Earle of Essex and his Wiffe, the Ladie Frauncis 
Howard had byn maryed eight yeares, ther was by a 
Commission of Delegates an anullity found to be in 
that maryage . . . wheruppon they beinge sundered, 
ther was a maryage solemnized betweene the Earle of 
Somersett and her upon the 26th of December, 1613, 
at Whithall, in the Chappell, being St. Steeven's 
dale, at which maryage was present the Kinges 
Majestic and the Queene, with the Prince and all the 
Lordes and Ladies of the Court and about London. 
The Bride was given by the Earle of Suffolke, Lord 
Chamberlaine, her Father. And the gentlemen of the 
Chappell had for their fee as before had been used, the 
somme of five poundes."^ John Chamberlain described 
the scene in a letter to Miss Carleton. " The Marriage 
was on Sunday, without any such bravery as was 
looked for. Only some of the Earl's followers bestowed 
cost upon themselves ; the rest exceeded not either in 
number or expence. The Bride was married in her 
hair " (that is, Mr. Nichols explains, with her hair 
hanging loosely down, as the Princess Elizabeth had 
worn it at her wedding) "... The Dean of the Chapel 
coupled them ; which fell out strangely that the same 
man should marry the same person in the same place, 
upon the self-same day (after eight years), the former 
party yet living. All the difference was, the King 

^ Rimbault, op. cit, pp. 162, 166. 
2 D 



402 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

gave her the last time, and now her father. The King 
and Queen were both present, and tasted wafers and 
ypocrass, as at ordinary weddings."^ On the same 
evening a Masque by Thomas Campion was presented 
in the Banqueting-House at Whitehall ; it was pub- 
lished in 1614, and is reprinted by Mr. Nichols in 
his Progresses of King James I. The author gave an 
interesting account of the way in which his stage was 
prepared. The upper part, or "dais," of the great 
hall "was theatred with pillars, scaffolds," etc. ; "at 
the lower end of the Hall, before the sceane, was made 
an arch tryumphall, passing beautifull, which enclosed 
the whole workes." The scene itself was in several 
compartments, the upper part showing a sky cut off 
by clouds, and the lower part a garden ; there were 
side-pieces showing two promontories, one running 
in rocks into the sea and the other covered with wood ; 
" in the midst betweene them appeared a sea in per- 
spective with ships, some cunningly painted, some 
arteficially sayling." Campion explained that the 
figures of mythology were out of fashion: "Our 
modern writers have rather transferd their fictions to 
the persons of Enchaunters and Commaunders of 
Spirits, as that excellent Poet Torquato Tasso hath 
done, and many others."^ 

It seems reasonable to suppose that Shakespeare was 
intended to be one of that class, more especially as 
Campion makes pointed reference to the dispersal of 
the fleet : 

" A storm confused against our tackle beat, 
Severing the ships." 

And Shakespeare's master "capering" to see the 
gallant vessel in safety^ may have suggested Campion's 

^ Chamberlain to Mrs. Alice Carleton, 30 Dec. 1613, in Dom. State 
Papers, vol. Ixxv. no. 53. Text in Nichols, Progresses of James I., 
ii. 725. 

'^ Text in Nichols, id., pp. 707-8. ^ Tempest, v.. i, 238. 



MASQUES AT SOMERSET'S MARRIAGE 403 

skippers "shouting and tryumphing after their manner." 
''Twelve Skippers in red capps, with* short cassocks 
and long slopps wide at the knees of white canvass 
striped with crimson, white gloves and pomps, and 
red stockings."^ 

On the day after the wedding, Jonson produced his 
entertainment, printed in his collected Works as A 
Challenge at Tilt at a Marriage.^ Two Cupids came 
in wrangling : " I serve the Man, and the nobler 
creature." "But I the woman, and the purer; and 
therefore the worthier." It is agreed that the question 
shall be fought out at another time by the ten knights 
on each side in the tiltyard. 

On Wednesday, the 29th of December, some of the 
King's servants, or gentlemen about the Court, per- 
formed Jonson's comical Irish Masque? "Out ran a 
fellow," says Jonson, "attired like a citizen," and 
after him several Irish footmen. There was Dennis, the 
King's Costermonger's Boy, and Donnell, Dermock, 
and Patrick, and others, whose masters had brought 
them from Ireland. There was " a great news of a 
great bridal," and they had come over to see the 
show. "Ty man, Robyne, tey shay": " Marry ty man 
Toumaish hish daughter, tey shay" : " Ay, ty good man 
Toumaish o' Shuffolke." Their masters had come to 
dance "fading and te fadow," country dances in the 
style of "Sir Roger de Coverley"; but they had lost 
their fine clothes in a storm, and found no great fish 
or "devoish vit a clowd " to help them. "Tey will 
fight for tee. King Yamish, and for my Mistresh tere " : 
"and my little Maishter" : " And te vfrow, ty Daugh- 
ter, tat is in Tuchland." The footman and as many 
boys danced "to the bagpipe, and other rude music" ; 
and then the gentlemen danced in their great Irish 

^ See stage directions in Nichols, u.s., p. 713. 
^ Jonson, Worlts, ed. Gifford, 1S38, pp. 591-2. 
2 Id., pp. 593-4. 



404 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" 

mantles "to a solemn music of harps" ; and a "civil 
gentleman " of that nation brought in a bard whose 
singing of charms to two harps reminds us of the 
"harmonious sphere" of the Masque of Hymen and 
Ferdinand's "harmonious charmingly" in The Tem- 
pests Ariel's business "in the veins o' the earth, 
when it is baked with frost," ^ may have influenced 
the form of the bard's last song, when he sang of 
"Earth's ragged chains, wherein rude winter bound 
her veins." 

A letter, before quoted, from Chamberlain to Mrs. 
Alice Carleton contains an account of the enter- 
tainment : "Yesterday there was a medley Masque of 
five English and five Scots, which are called the high 
Dancers, among whom Sergeant Boyd, one Aber- 
crombie, and Auchmouty, that was at Padua and 
Venice, are esteemed the most principal and lofty. "^ 
Mr. Nichols identified the first of these high-steppers 
with "Sergeant Bowy," a clerk in the Royal cellars, 
who appears in the roll of New Year's gifts for 1605-6 
as giving his Majesty "a botle of ypocras."^ Mr. 
Patrick Abercrombie appears in the lists of persons 
to whom the King gave orders on the Exchequer. 
Mr. John Auchmuty was one of the Grooms of the 
King's Bedchamber, who obtained in 1607-8 a grant 
of i^2,ooo at once, out of "Recusants'" lands and 
goods.^ 

Chamberlain writes again on the 5th of January, 
this time to Sir Dudley Carleton, and has more to say 

^ Tempest, iv. i, 119. For the "harmonious sphere of love," vide 
infra, p. 417. 2 Tetnpest, i. 2, 255-6. 

^ Vide sup., p. 402, note i. "* Nichols, 11. s., i. 598. 

•' Id., i. 599, note. Taylor, in his Peymyles Pilgrimage (1618), tells us 
how, on his way back to London, he was entertained by Master John 
" Acmootye," one of the grooms of His Majesty's bed-chamber, at his 
house in East Lothian. John Auchmuty went with Taylor to Dunbar, 
"where ten Scottish pints of wine were consumed," and James Auchmuty, 
a brother, and a g-room of the privy chamber, accompanied him on his 
road as far as Topcliffe in Yorkshire, where they parted ways. 



SOMERSET'S MARRIAGE 405 

about the medley : "The lofty Maskers were so well 
liked at Court the last week, that they are appointed 
to perform it again on Monday ; yet this Device, 
which was a mimical imitation of the Irish, was not 
so pleasing to many, which think it no time, as the 
case stands, to exasperate that nation by making it 
ridiculous." ^ 

We now return to the Cupids and their challenge at 
tilt. On the New Year's day, at the time fixed for trying 
the match, twenty knights rode into the tilt-yard, in 
splendid doublets and ' ' bases, " like petticoats from waist 
to knee. '' On the New Year's day," said Chamberlain, 
"was the tiltings of ten against ten. The bases, trap- 
pings, and all other furniture of the one party was 
murrey and white, which were the Bride's colours ; the 
other green and yellow for the Bridegroom. There 
were two handsome chariots or pageants that brought 
in two Cupids, whose contention was, whether were the 
truer, his or hers, each maintained by their champions." 
Among the bride's combatants we notice the names of 
the Duke of Lennox and the Earls of Pembroke and 
Montgomery ; the Bridegroom's party was commanded 
by the Earl of Rutland, with whom rode the bride's 
brother and several others of her family. The part of 
umpire was taken by "Hymen," who charged both sides 
to lay down their weapons: "The contention is not, who 
is the true Love, but, being both true, who loves 
most ; cleaving the bow between you, and dividing the 
palm." 

"The Lord Mayor," continues Chamberlain, "was 
sent to by the King, to entertain this new-married 
couple. ... It was resolved to do it at the charge 
of the City in the Merchant Taylors' Hall upon four 
days' warning, and thither they went yesternight about 
six o'clock, in through Cheapside, all by torch-light, 

^ In Doni. State Papers, vol. Ixxvi. no. 2. Text in Nichols, v.s.,n. 
732-3- 



4o6 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" 

accompanied by the Father and Mother of the Bride, 
and all the Lords and ladies about the Court. The Men 
were all mounted and richly arrayed, making a goodly 
shew ; the women all in coaches. ... I understand that 
after supper they had a Play and a Masque, and after 
that a Banquet. . . . Mr. Attorney's Masque is for 
tomorrow, and for a conclusion of Christmas and their 
shews together, for the King says he will be gone 
towards Royston upon Friday."^ The full title of 
Bacon's Masque was as follows: "The Maske of 
Flowers, by the Gentlemen of Graie's Inn, at the Court 
of Whitehall, in the Banquetting House, upon Twelfe 
Night, 1613-14. Being the last of the solemnities and 
magnificences which were performed at the marriage of 
the Right Honourable the Earle of Somerset and the 
Lady Frances, daughter of the Earle of Suffolke, Lord 
Chamberlaine."^ 

In a letter written a few days before, Chamberlain 
mentions the same entertainment : " Sir Francis Bacon 
prepares a Maske which will stand him in above i^2,ooo, 
and though he has been offered some help . . . yet 
he would not accept it, but offers them the whole charge 
with the honour."^ 

The idea, or "device," was this. The Sun, wishing 
to do honour to the marriage, orders the Winter and the 
Spring to go to Court and there present sports, such as 
are called " Christmasse sportes, or Carnavall sportes," 
as Winter's gift, and shows of greater pomp and splen- 
dour on the part of Spring. Moreover, the Winter was 
to take notice of a challenge between Silenus, the 
champion of wine, and Kawasha, an Indian god, who 
claimed the greater merit for tobacco. The contrast 
to be settled by anti-masques, or " anticke-maskes " of 
dance and song. The Lady Primavera, or Spring, 

1 Nichols, ibid. 

'^ Text in Nichols, id.^ p. 735, etc. 

^ Letter of gth Dec. Text in Nichols, op. cit., ii. 705. 



BACON'S MASQUE 407 

was to inquire as to certain youths, such as Adonis 
and Narcissus, who had been transformed into flowers, 
and were now to return to human life. The "fabric" 
showed a garden on a slope, with an arbour arched on 
pillars at the top ; at the lower end of the Hall was 
a "travers," or screen, painted in perspective, and 
showing a city wall, a gate, temples, and the roofs of 
houses. Out of the great gate entered Winter " in a 
short gowne of silke shagge, like withered grasse, all 
frosted and snowed over, and his cap, gown, gamashes " 
(or spatterdashes), ''and mittens, furred crimson." 
Primavera enters, and claps the old man on the 
shoulder. "See where she comes, apparell'd like the 
spring. "1 Imagine a wood-nymph, her neck swathed 
in pearls; her bodice of embroidered satin, a short 
kirtle of cloth of gold, worked with branches and 
leaves ; she wore a mantle of green and silver, and 
white buskins tied with green ribbons and adorned 
with flowers. 

Now enters Chanticleer (Callus), a smart postman, 
with a message from the Sun, and almost immediately 
follows the " Anticke-Maske of the Song." Silenus 
wears a crimson satin doublet, "without wings, collar, 
or skirts," with "sleeves of cloth of golde, bases and 
gamashaes of the same " ; his Sergeant bears a copper 
mace ; his singers were a miller, a cooper, a brewer, 
and a vintner's boy ; and their music the tabor and 
pipe, a sackbut, viols treble and bass, and a little 
mandora lute. Kawasha, in snuff-colour, is carried 
on a pole by two Floridans ; his Sergeant holds a 
tobacco-pipe "as big as a caliver " ; his shabby band 
is headed by a blind harper and his boy. Kawasha is 
nicknamed " Potan," after Powhatan, Emperor of 
Virginia and father of the Princess Pocohontas. Mr. 
Strachey may have been the authority for the name; 
for in his Travails into Virginia he confessed himself 

^ Pericles^ i. i, it. 



4o8 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

bound to Lord Bacon "by being one of the Graies Inne 
Societe."^ The Singers of Silenus began their catch 
with this allusion : 

"Ahay for and a hoe, 
Let's make this great Potan 
Drinke off Silenus' kan ; 
And when that he well drunke is, 
Returne him to his munkies 
From whence he came." 

The songs are followed by an " Anticke-masque of 
the Dance." Sixteen favourite characters linked hands 
and leaped in a madcap round. We can distinguish 
Smug the Smith, two Switzers, a Roaring Boy, Maid 
Marian with her Sweep, and a Jewess of Portugal. 
Loud music sounded and the screens were withdrawn, 
and Primavera appeared in a garden "of a glorious 
and strange beauty." The Flowers were transformed 
into Masquers, magnificent in white satin, with carna- 
tion and silver embroidery, and with egret-plumes 
in their caps, who performed their set figures and sang 
their Flower-song. 

They selected their partners and trod a measure or so 
even before the masque was over ; and when their 
vizards were ofi^, they danced in the regular Suite, the 
grave Pavane, or a Saraband, and then the vigorous 
Galliards and Courantes, and at the end something gay 
and brisk like a Morris, when the dancer shook his 
bells, "capering upright like a wild Morisco." "They 
took their ladies," according to the composer's note, 
"with whom they danced Measures, corantoes, duret- 
toes, morascoes, galliards " ; and we find a similar phrase 
in Beaumont's masque, when the knights take out their 
ladies "to dance with them galliards, durets, corantoes, 
&c." The nature of the Duret, or Duretto, is unknown. 
The Galliard, or Cinquepace, was a swift and wandering 

1 W. Strachey, Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia, etc., ed. 
R. H. Major, i84q. Dedication to Bacon. 



DANCES AT SOMERSET'S MARRIAGE 409 

dance, according to Sir John Davies, whose Orchestra 
was printed in 1596. 

*' Five was the number of the Music's feet ; 
Which still the Dance did with five paces meet."^ 

''What is thy excellence in a galliard, knight?" 
asked Sir Toby in Twelfth Night: 

'* Faith, I can cut a caper : . . . I think I have the back- 
trick simply as strong as any man in Illyria. "^ 

We find an allusion to the Galliard in the Boatswain's 
speech at the end of The Tempest : 

" Where we, in all her trim, freshly beheld 
Our royal, good and gallant ship, our master 
Capering to eye her. "^ 

There is another allusion to the dance in Howell's 
letter to Lady Sunderland on the murder of Bucking- 
ham : "The Duke did rise up in a well-dispos'd humour 
out of his bed, and cut a Caper or two."* 

The Courante, or Coranto, was a kind of devious 
glissade. The dancer, said Davies, must range, "and 
turn, and wind, with unexpected change " : 

" What shall I name those current travases. 
That on a triple Dactyl foot, do run 
Close by the ground, with sliding passages ; 
Wherein that dancer greatest praise hath won. 
Which with best order can all orders shun ? " ^ 

Amid all these marriage festivities there was an 
uneasy suspicion of crime. Sir Thomas Overbury had 
been sent to the Tower early in the year, and had died 
there on the 15th of September, before the marriage. 
It was known that Overbury's real offence was his 
attempt to thwart the divorce proceedings. His death 
was ascribed to natural causes, but it was thought that 
Mrs. Turner was concerned in the case ; and Mrs. 

^ Davies, Orchestra, st. 67. ^ Twelfth Night, i. 3, 127-32. 

•' Tempest, v. i, 236-8. 

■* Epp Ho-Eh, ed. Jacobs, 1892, p. 253 (i. § 5, let. 7 : Stamford, 5 Aug. 
1628). ^ Orchestra, st. 69. 



4IO PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

Turner not only professed to be a witch, but was 
believed to be a dealer in philtres and poisons. It was 
not proved till October, 1615, that Overbury had been 
cruelly murdered. The Earl and Countess of Somerset, 
Mrs. Turner, and several of their aiders and abetters, 
were convicted of murder. Mrs. Turner made a good 
end at the three-cornered Tyburn tree ; her good looks 
and gold ringlets were accepted by the crowd as suffi- 
cient proof of her repentance. The Earl and Countess 
were pardoned, but dismissed from Court. Somerset 
got a new lease for life, as James Howell wrote to his 
father about that time, and so had the "articulate 
Lady," as they called the Countess, from her "Articles " 
against Essex. "She was afraid," says Howell, "that 
Coke the Lord Chief-Justice . ... would have made 
white Broth of them, but that the Prerogative kept them 
from the Pot : yet the subservient Instruments, the 
lesser Flies could not break thorow, but lay entangled 
in the Cobweb ; amongst others Mistress Turner, the 
first inventress oiyelloTO Starch, was executed in a Cob- 
web Lawn Ruff of that colour at Tyburn, and with her 
I believe that yellow Starch, which so much disfigured 
our Nation, and rendered them so ridiculous and fan- 
tastic, will receive its Funeral."^ 



II 

Shakespeare's attitude towards masques — jonson's 
" masque of hymen " — parallels with " the tempest " 

We return to the wedding of 1606, with the object of 
comparing The Tempest with the regular Court-Masques, 
and more especially with the " Masque of Hymen and 
Festivity at Barriers." 

Anne of Denmark was glad of any excuse for a masque. 

^ Epp. Ho-EL, U.S., pp. 20, 21 (i. § I, let. 2: Broad Street, London, 
I March 1618). 



MASQUES 411 

Her Court, according to Arthur Wilson's history, was 
"a continued Maskarado^'''' where she and her ladies 
appeared in splendid attire, " like so many Sea-nymphs 
. . . to the ravishment of the beholders."^ The 
essence of the masque was ''pomp and glory": so 
said Lord Bacon, who understood the business as well 
as the best professional: "These things are but toys 
. . . but yet, since princes will have such things, it is 
better they should be graced with elegancy than daubed 
with cost. "2 Mr. Isaac D'Israeli described some of these 
festivities in his Curiosities of Literature, and praised 
them for their "fairy-like magnificence and lyrical 
spirit."^ Mr. Gifford, in the Memoirs of Jonson, goes 
deep into the subject.* The masque, he thought, was a 
combination of dialogue, singing, and dancing, har- 
moniously blended by the use of some slight plot or 
fable ; the scenery was costly and splendid ; " the most 
celebrated Masters were employed on the songs and 
dances " ; and the dresses, on which the ultimate success 
depended, were always new and strange, rich to ex- 
travagance, all gold and jewels : 

" Now this mask 

Was cried incomparable ; and the ensuing night 

Made it a fool and beggar."^ 

Mr. D'Israeli quotes Warburton's odd saying : 
"Shakespeare was an enemy to these fooleries, as 
appears by his writing none." This was a hit at 
Jonson, who was thought to have classed The Tempest 
among common fooleries ; but the word used by him 
was "drolleries," a common name for the puppet- 
show.*^ Malone was scornful at "the wretched taste of 
such bungling performances." 

1 Wilson, U.S., p. 685, col. 2. "^ Essays, xxxvii. 

^ Curiosities of Literature, 12th ed. , 1840, pp. 375-8. 
* Preface to Works of Jonson, u.s., p. 65. 
^ King Henry VI II., i. i, 26-8. 

•^ Jonson, Induction to Bart. Fair: "If there be never a servant- 
monster in the fair, who can help it, he says . . . ? he is loth to make 



412 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

But Shakespeare himself was not averse from "revels, 
dances, and Masques." There was a masque at York 
Place in his Henry VIII, ; in Timon of Athens ^ 
Cupid enters " with a mask of Ladies as Amazons, with 
lutes in their hands, dancing and playing " ; and each 
of the Lords singled out an Amazon, "and all dance, 
men with women, a lofty strain or two to the haut- 
boys" ; and in Love's Labour's Lost, when the trumpet 
sounds, the masquers enter, some as blackamoors and 
some in Russian habits, to tread a measure with the 
Ladies on the grass. ^ In The Tempest we have the 
sketch of a Court-masque, as well as a little anti- 
masque, or "antic masque," as some used to call it. 

Dr. Hurd was a cautious critic ; but he seems to 
have fallen into a mistake about this "masque" in The 
Tempest. He affirmed that the spectacle of Iris and 
the goddesses and the dancing nymphs and husband- 
men put to shame all the masques of Jonson, not only 
in construction, but in the splendour of its show.^ 
Gifford went to the opposite extreme, in saying that 
the little interlude was danced and sung in the ordinary 
course "to a couple of fiddles, perhaps, in the balcony 
of the stage." 

The costumes of Shakespeare's goddesses were prob- 
ably copied from Samuel Daniel's Royal masque, 
performed at Hampton Court in 1604. The stage 
directions for dresses and dances were written by 
Daniel himself, and are further explained by Mr. 
Ernest Law in his reprint. It appears that Queen 



nature afraid in his plays, like those that beget tales, tempests, and such 
like drolleries." 

^ Henry VIII., i. 4 ; Timon of Athens, i. 2 ; Love's Labour s Lost, v. 2. 

^ Hurd, Dissertation iv. , On the Marks of I?nitation, in Collected 
Works, 181 1, vol. ii. p. 251. His actual words are : " The knowledge of 
antiquity requisite to succeed in them was, I imagine, the reason that 
Shakespeare was not over fond to try his hand at these elaborate trifles. 
Once, indeed, he did, and with such success as to disgrace the very best 
things of this kind we find in Jonson." 



SHAKESPEARE'S DEBT TO MASQUES 413 

Anne supplied herself out of Queen Elizabeth's ward- 
robe ; and at the Tower '* there were found no less 
than 500 robes, all of the greatest magnificence."^ 
Some of them, as altered for the masque, were minutely- 
described by the composer. Venus appeared in a 
dove-coloured and silver mantle, embroidered with 
doves ; Ceres in straw-colour and silver embroidery, 
with ears of corn in her hair ; Tethys in a sea-green 
mantle, "with a silver embroidery of waves, and a 
dressing of reeds" (for her hair).^ Lord Bacon, we 
may observe, preferred spangles: " Oes or spangs, 
as they are of no great cost, so they are of most glory : 
as for rich Embroidery, it is lost and not discerned."^ 
Juno took the chief place in the masque. Daniel de- 
scribed her as wearing a gold crown and a sky-coloured 
mantle, embroidered with gold, and figured with pea- 
cocks' feathers : 

" First here Imperiall y^^wo in her Chayre, 

With Scepter of command for Kingdomes large : 
Descends, all clad in colours of the Ayre, 

Crown'd with bright Starres, to signifie her charge."^ 

Jonson brought out his Masque of Hymen on the 
wedding-day, January 5th, 1606, with the help of 
Inigo Jones, as contriver of the machines. We con- 
tinue our extracts from Pory's letter to Cotton.^ " But 
to return to the Mask ; both Inigo, Ben, and the Actors, 
men and women, did their parts with great commenda- 
tion. The concert or soul of the Mask was Hymen 
bringing in a bride, and Juno Pronuba's priest, a 
bridegroom, proclaiming that these two should be 
sacrificed to Nuptial Union. And here the Poet made 
apostrophe to the Union of the Kingdoms. But before 
the sacrifice could be performed, Ben Jonson turned 
the globe of the earth, standing behind the altar, and 

^ Law, Introd. to The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses, 1880, p. 13. 

2 Id., 59-61. * Essays, xxxvii. , ti.s. 

* Vision of the Twelve Goddesses, p. 68. ^ See sup., p. 397, note 3. 



414 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

within the concave sat the eight men-Maskers repre- 
senting the four Humours and the four Affections, who 
leapt forth to disturb the sacrifice to Union. But, 
amidst their fury, Reason, that sat above all, crowned 
with burning tapers, came down and silenced them. 
These Eight, together with Reason their moderatress, 
mounted above their heads, sat somewhat like the 
Ladies in the scallop-shell the last year." This was a 
reminiscence of Jonson's Masque of Blackness^ per- 
formed on Twelfth-night, 1605, i" which the Queen, 
Lady Suffolk, and ten other ladies, appeared as blacka- 
moors, daughters of Niger. ^ The masquers were 
placed in a shell of mother-o'-pearl, curiously made to 
move "and rise with the billow." The machine was 
described, in a letter, by Sir Dudley Carleton:^ "There 
was a great engine at the lower end of the room, which 
had motion, and in it were the images of sea-horses, 
with other terrible fishes, which were ridden by the 
Moors ; the indecorum was that there was all fish, and 
no water. At the further end was a great shell in form 
of a skallop, wherein were four seats." Earlier in the 
letter he describes the wedding of Sir Philip Herbert, 
afterwards Earl of Montgomery, and Lady Susan Vere, 
"performed at Whitehall, with all the honour could 
be done a great favourite." ^ The phrase serves to 
illustrate Prospero's complaint of the plot to confer 
fair Milan on his brother, " with all the honours."^ 

Mr Pory continues as follows : "About the Globe of 
Earth hovered a middle region of clouds, in the centre 
whereof stood a grand concert of musicians, and upon 
the cantons or horns sat the Ladies, four at one corner 
and four at another, who descended upon the stage, 
not after the stale, downright perpendicular fashion, 

^ Jonson, Works, u.s., pp. 544-7. 

^ To Sir Ralph Winwood, Jan., 1605. Text in Winwood, Memorials, 
etc., 1725, ii. 43-5; Nichols, 11, s., ii. 470-6. 
^ Vide sup. , pp. 397-8. 
* Tempest, i. 2, 126-7. 



PORY'S LETTER TO COTTON 415 

like a bucket into a well, but came gently sloping 
down."^ These eight represented the nuptial powers of 
Juno, such as ^^Juga,'' "who made one, of twain," and 
^^ Curis,'' whose office was to deck the "fair tresses" 
of the bride. "The men were clad in crimson, and 
the women in white." Mr. Pory is only describing the 
general effect. " They had every one a white plume of 
the richest hern's feathers, and were so rich in jewels 
upon their heads as was most glorious. I think they 
hired and borrowed all the principal jewels and ropes of 
pearl both in Court and City. The Spanish Ambassador 
seemed but poor to the meanest of them. They danced 
all the variety of dances both severally and promiscue ; 
and then the women and men, as namely, the Prince, 
who danced with as great perfection and as settled a 
majesty as could be devised, the Spanish Ambassador 
. . . &c. And the men gleaned out of the Queen, the 
bride, and the greatest of the Ladies." 

The dancers performed several intricate figures, 
ending with a Ladies' Chain, when all took other 
partners to dance Measures, GalHards, and Corantoes. 
The whole "scene" being drawn again, and covered 
with clouds, they left off these "intermixed dances," 
and danced in figures again, ending up with a circle or 
inner ring round the altar of sacrifice. 

" Up, youths ! hold up your lig-hts in air, 
And shake abroad their flaming hair. 
Now move united, and in gait, 
As you, in pairs, do front the state." 

The writer of the masque had ransacked antiquity 
for his marriage-lore. He was familiar with every detail 
of the Athenian and Roman weddings ; and the piece 
was printed with an apparatus of notes from the gram- 
marians and poets. "^ It was a nourishing and sound 

1 A canton, in heraldry, is the eighth part of the escutcheon, cut off by 
cross lines. 

'^ In Jonson's Works, n.s., pp. 552-61. 



4i6 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

meat, said Father Ben, though some were too squeamish 
to enjoy it ; let them take on their empty trenchers "a 
few Italian herbs, picked up and made into a salad." 
"It is not my fault, if I fill them out nectar, and they 
run to metheglin."^ 

The opening is full of the ceremonies described by 
Varro and Festus. The scene or curtains being 
"drawn," an altar was discovered, to which advanced 
five pages with waxen tapers: "behind them, one 
representing a Bridegroom : his hair short, and bound 
with party-coloured ribands and gold twist : his gar- 
ments purple and white." On the other side entered 
Hymen in a saffron-coloured robe, "his head crowned 
with roses and marjoram, in his right hand a torch 
of pine-tree." After him a youth in white, carrying 
a torch of white-thorn, and under his arm "a little 
wicker flasket," and then two men in white, with distaff 
and spindle. 

Now one enters personating the bride, her hair flow- 
ing and loose and lightly dusted with grey; "on her 
head a garland of roses, like a turret " ; her garments 
white ; on her back a fleece hanging down ; " her zone, 
or girdle about her waist of white wool, fastened with 
the Herculean knot." Next marched the two " hand- 
fasters," or joiners of hands,^ and two that sang and 
carried the water and fire, and the musicians crowned 
with roses. Near the altar stood the globe, or micro- 
cosm, called the "huge body" and "little world of 
man," from which rushed out the men-masquers "with 
a kind of contentious music." Hymen is alarmed and 
cries to his torch-bearers : 

" Save, save the virgins ; keep your hallow'd lights 
Untouch'd ; and with their flame defend our rites," 

When Reason has restored peace, she describes the 

1 Preface to Masque. 

^ Called in the text "Auspices." 



JONSON'S MASQUE OF HYMEN 417 

ceremonies, the meaning of the flask, the distaff and 
spindle, and the mystical dress of the bride ; her hair 
shed with grey, the fleece and the utensils of spinning, 
imply that she is now a matron : 

" The Zone of wool about her waist, 
Which, in contrary circles cast, 
Doth meet in one strong knot, that binds, 
Tells you, so should all married minds. 
And lastly, these five waxen lights 
Imply perfection in the rites." 

The speech of Reason concludes the ''first masque " ; 
we are now to see the entrance of the "women-mas- 
quers," and the vision of Juno, Queen of Heaven, the 
Dispenser and Governor of Marriages. The upper 
part of ''the scene " was all of clouds, "made artifici- 
ally to swell and ride like the rack" ; "the air clearing, 
in the top thereof was discovered Juno, sitting in a chair, 
supported by two beautiful peacocks"; she wore a white 
diadem and a veil tied with "several coloured silks," 
and crowned with a garland of lilies and roses." At 
her feet stood Iris, her messenger, and on either side 
the ladies that were to act in "the second masque " : 

" And see where Juno, whose great name 
Is Unio, in the anagram, 
Displays her glittering state and chair, 
As she enlightened all the air ! 
Hark how the charming tunes do beat 
In sacred concords 'bout her seat ! " 

The ladies descend, in clouds that stoop gently down 
to earth, and begin their dances in circles round "the 
harmonious sphere of Love." 

"Such was the exquisite performance," said Ben 
Jonson ; "... nor was there wanting whatsoever 
might give to the furniture or complement ; either in 
riches, or strangeness of the habits, delicacy of dances, 
magnificence of the scene, or divine rapture of music." 

2 E 



4i8 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

The costumes of the eight lords were copied from 
ancient statues, "with some modern additions: which 
made it both graceful and strange." They wore 
Persian crowns and tight coats of "carnation cloth of 
silver," with streamers, or "labels," of white satin, 
sleeves of "watchet cloth of silver," capes of several- 
coloured silks, and silver greaves. Jonson considered 
that the ladies' attire was "full of glory" ; "the upper 
part of white cloth of silver, wrought with Juno's birds 
and fruits " ; a loose garment of carnation and silver, 
and a golden zone ; another flowing robe of watchet 
and gold ; all made " round and swelling," with a look 
of the "farthingale" fashion; "their shoes were 
azure and gold, set with rubies and diamonds ; so were 
all their garments ; and every part abounding in orna- 
ment." 

"No less to be admired," said Jonson, was "the 
whole machine of the spectacle," the first part consist- 
ing of the globe, "filled with countries, and those 
gilded ; where the sea was exprest, heightened with 
silver waves." The upper part was crowned with a 
statue of Jupiter the Thunderer, above a sphere of fire 
moving so swiftly that no eye could distinguish its 
colour. In this high region, between painted clouds, 
sat Juno on her golden throne, encircled with meteors 
and blazing stars ; below her a rainbow in which sat 
musicians in costumes of varied colours, to represent 
"Airy Spirits." ^ 

In the masque of The Fortunate Isles and their Union, 
produced in January, 1625-6,^ Jonson described the 
proper dress of one of these companions of Ariel. 
"His Majesty being set, enter, running, Jophiel, an 
airy spirit . . . attired in light silks of several 
colours, with wings of the same, a bright yellow hair, 

^ Jonson's notes, at end of Masque. 
'^ Jonson's Works, u.s., pp. 648-52. 



THE MASQUE AND BARRIERS 419 

a chaplet of flowers, blue silk stockings, and pumps, 
and gloves, with a silver fan in his hand " : 

" Sir, my name is Jophiel, 
Intelligence unto the sphere of Jupiter, 
An airy jocular Spirit, employed to you 
From Father Outis." 

The sketch of an "Aery Spirit" by Inigo Jones is pre- 
served in the Duke of Devonshire's Library. It was 
copied in facsimile in the volume upon Inigo Jones, 
printed for the Shakespeare Society ; ^ but so far as we 
can judge, it was intended neither for Ariel nor for 
Jophiel. We see no chaplet on the yellow curls, no 
gloves or fan, and the silk stockings and dancing- 
pumps are replaced by buskins of an ancient fashion. 
There is no reason for doubting the accuracy of 
Jonson's description. We suppose that he was present 
at the masque of The Fortunate Isles ; and we have his 
own note on the earlier occasion that his " airy Spirits " 
appeared "in habits various," and in dresses of 
"several colours." 

The Monday evening was devoted to the sports of 
the barriers, a kind of military masque combined with 
an assault of arms. A dispute about marriage was to 
arise between "Truth," in a blue dress and a wreath of 
palm, and her rival " Opinion," an impostor who had 
chosen the same costume. This dispute could only be 
decided by arms ; and two sets of champions advanced 
with pikes and swords to the bar set across the hall. 
The Duke of Lennox commanded fifteen "Knights in 
carnation and white " for Truth ; the Earl of Sussex led 
as many in watchet and white for her rival. They 
were all led to the dais by the Earl of Nottingham, 
Lord High Constable for that night, supported by the 
Earl of Worcester as Earl-Marshal; and the champions 
then fought, at first in pairs, and afterwards three to 

^ Edited by Peter Cunningham, J. R. Planche, and J. P. Collier, 1848. 



420 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

three ; "and performed it with that alacrity and vigour, 
as if Mars himself had been to triumph before Venus, 
and invented a new Masque."^ 

The military entertainment has little connection with 
The Tempest, except as being an appendix or "corol- 
lary " to the actual wedding-masque ; but there are 
lines and phrases in it which will be found useful in 
explaining certain difficult passages in the play. "You 
look wearily," says Miranda ; 

'* No, noble mistress ; 'tis fresh morning with me 
When you are by at night. "^ 

This seems to mean that Miranda's eyes were the 
heavens in which his sunlight dawned. Calderon has 
the same thought in his play Bien vengas, Maly where 
the bright sun rises in the lady's eyes; ^^ En tus ojos, 
Senora^ madrugaha el claro Sol" ;^ and in the speech of 
Truth at the barriers we find the couplet : 

'* Marriage Love's object is ; at whose bright eyes 
He lights his torches, and calls them his skies." 

The same speech contains a reference to "mirrors 
decked with diamonds." This affords an illustration of 
Prospero's words: "When I have decked the sea with 
drops full salt," and Caliban's talk of "brave utensils 
for so he calls them, which, when he has a house, he'll 
deck withal."^ In the Two Gentlemen of Verona the 
lady's glove is called "Sweet ornament that decks a 
thing divine."^ Shakespeare may have thought of the 
be-diamonded mirror, or of the sea as personified as 
Tethys. We perceive that the word, as used by him, 
always implies the idea of adornment. We take 

^ Jonson's notes on the Masque, among- the stage-directions. 
" Tejnpest, iii. i, 32-4. 

^ Bien vengas, Mai, Jornada i. Escena 5, in Hartzenbusch's ed. of 
Calderon, vol. iv. p. 310, col. 3. 
* Tempest, i. 2, 155 ; iii. 2, 104-5. 
^ Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii, i, 4. 



ILLUSTRATIVE PASSAGES 421 

another instance from the first scene in the Midsummer 
Night's Dream : 

•' When Phoebe doth behold 
Her silver visag-e in the watery g"lass, 
Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass." ^ 

Dr. Johnson thought it absurd to suppose that the 
sea could be adorned with teardrops. Decking, he 
thought, was "covering," as a deck covers the ship. 
*'In some parts," he added, "they yet say deck the 
tabled Yet here again we can surely detect the idea 
of display and adornment. Malone introduced a new 
idea, which received a very general approval. ' ' To deck, 
I am told, signifies in the North, to sprinkle.''''^ He 
cited Mr. John Ray's Collection of English Words, not 
generally used, first printed in 1674, and afterwards in 
1691. Among the north-country words we find " deg " 
and "leek," in the sense of sprinkling.^ In many 
glossaries, "deg" is specially used for sprinkling linen 
before ironing in the laundry ; and the servants in 
Holderness are bidden to sprinkle the pavement before 
sweeping it: "Dag causey, afoor thoo sweeps it." 
Among Ray's South and East Country Words we find 
the following definition : ^^ Dag; Dew upon the Grass. 
Hence Daggle-tail is spoken of a Woman that hath 
dabbled her Coats with Dew, Wet, or Dirt." It seems 
almost certain that Shakespeare's phrase bore the mean- 
ing belonging to it in literary English. There is also 
a difficulty about the drops being "full salt," as salt 
as the waves. Why, it may be asked, should Prospero 
make a point about salt tears and salt seas ? There 
is certainly an obscurity about the argument ; but 
perhaps we may take it as an instance of the " pathetic 
fallacy " by which external nature is treated as being in 

^ Midsummer Night's Dream, i. i, 209-11. 

^ Johnson and Malone on Tempest, i. 2, 155, in Boswell's Malone, 

vol. XV. 

■^ p. 4, "to Deg, V. Leek ; p. 26, Leek on, pour on more, Liquor, v.g." 



422 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

harmony with human feelings. Prospero himself, a 
few lines earlier in his speech, had found mercy and 
protection in the waves and winds : 

" There they hoist us, 
To cry to the sea that roar'd to us, to sig-h 
To the winds whose pity, sig-hing back again, 
Did us but loving wrong. " 1 

For a modern example we might take the stanza from 
Lord Tennyson's Maud on the wind in the mead : 

" From the meadow your walks have left so sweet 
That whenever a March-wind sighs 
He sets the jewel-print of your feet 
In violets blue as your eyes." ^ 

•^ Tempest, i. 2, 148-51. '^ Tennyson, Maud, part i. xxii. 



III. THE MARRIAGE OF THE 
PRINCESS ELIZABETH, 1613 

I 

ACCOUNT OF THE MARRIAGE CEREMONIES 

n^HE TEMPEST was certainly acted at Court 
shortly before the Princess Elizabeth's wedding. 
It may have been on the list of plays ordered for 
performance during the preceding autumn, but its 
production, in that case, was considerably delayed by 
the illness and death of the Prince of Wales in 
November, 1612. 

Prince Frederick, the accepted suitor, arrived in 
London about the middle of October. He was the 
object of great popular interest, the nation regarding 
him as a pillar of the Protestant cause. He was usually 
known as the Palsgrave, as being Count of the 
Pfalz, the Palatinate of the Rhine. He was also an 
Elector of the Empire, and held the nominal dignity 
of Arch-server, or ''Arch-sewer of the Dishes," at the 
imperial banquets. The " Sewer " was an official who 
placed the dishes on the table, as we learn from Over- 
bury's character of "a Puny Clerk" : " he practices to 
make the words in his declaration spread as a sewer 
doth the dishes of a niggard's table. "^ His other 
titles were enumerated by the kings-at-arms, "the high 
and mighty Prince Frederick, by the grace of God, 
Count Palatine of the Rhine, Arch-sewer and Prince 

■^ Overbury, Characters^ in Character Writings of the Seventeenth 
Century i ed. Henry Morley, 1891, p. 67. 

423 



424 PRODUCTION OF '^THE TEMPEST" 

Elector of the Holy Roman Empire, Duke of Bavaria, 
and Knight of the most Noble Order of the Garter."^ 

Before his marriage he was lower in rank than the 
Lady Elizabeth, "sole daughter of the Crown of 
England." After the marriage she took the place next 
below her husband — a circumstance of great use in 
fixing the order in which the plays were performed. 
It was on this point of precedence that the Queen 
opposed the match, and threatened not to go to the 
wedding. James Howell, who knew the gossip of 
Denmark House, heard that Queen Anne's affection 
for her daughter had diminished, "so that she would 
often call her Goody Palsgrave.'''''^ He writes later on, 
when Frederick had lost his crown at the battle of 
Prague, that the Duke of Brunswick was going to 
help the Lady Elizabeth, "who, in the Zow Countries 
and some parts of Germany^ is called the Queen 
of Boheme, and for her winning princely comportment, 
The Queen of Hearts."^ Ben Jonson had praised her 
as a girl in the speeches at Prince Henry's barriers in 
a stately passage : 

"... That most princely maid, whose form might call 
The world to war, and make it hazard all 
His valour for her beauty ; she shall be 
Mother of nations, and her princes see 
Rivals almost to these. "^ 

Nor can it be said that these matters have lost all 
savour of political interest, since the Crown was settled 
by authority of Parliament upon the heirs, being Pro- 
testants, of the Electress Sophia, daughter of Eliza- 
beth, late Queen of Bohemia. 

On the 25th of October, 161 2, Prince Henry was 
seized with a fever. Some attributed it to a chill after 

^ Nichols, Progresses of James I. , ii. 523. 

2 Epp. Ho-El., ed. J. Jacobs, 1892, p. 105 (bk. i. § 2, let. 7 : 30 March 
1618). ^ Id., p. 112 (bk. i. § 2, let, 12 : ig March 1622). 

■* Jonson, WorliSy ed. Gifford, 1838, p. 580. 



DEATH OF PRINCE HENRY 425 

tennis at Hampton Court and a long swim in the river, 
and others to carelessness in diet. Sir Simonds D'Ewes 
preserved a tradition that the Prince was bewitched 
by Mrs. Turner, at the instigation of Overbury, who 
advised "removing out of the way and world that 
royal youth by fascination, and was himself afterwards 
in part an instrument for the effecting of it."^ Even Sir 
Theodore de Mayerne, the King's physician, was in 
dread of some planetary influence, for on the 29th he 
saw a double rainbow, with one end in the fields and 
the other resting on a room at St. James' where a lady 
had lately died.^ A doctor at that time required to 
know something of the occult, or, as Nick Culpepper 
told Mr. Ward of Stratford, ''a physitian without 
astrologie " was "like a pudden without fat."^ John 
Chamberlain, writing to Sir Dudley Carleton, said that 
it was a case of "the ordinary ague," but others put 
it down to "the New Disease," which was breaking 
out in all parts of the country.* Dr. C. Creighton 
considered that the symptoms pointed to typhus,^ and 
Dr. Norman Moore discussed it in the Reports of 
St. Bartholomew's Hospital as "the earliest case of 
typhoid fever on record."^ 

The Hallowmas plays and revels had been com- 
manded for the November festivities ; but on the ist 
of the month all the announcements were postponed on 
account of a bad bulletin from St. James' House. The 
next morning's report was more favourable: "His 
Highness was never so well as on this the 8th day, 
throughout the disease." But the improvement was 
followed by a relapse, and on the 6th of November the 
Prince died. 

^ Sir Simonds D'Ewes' Autobiography, ed. Halliwell, 1845, i. 91. 
^ Nichols, U.S., ii. 477. ^ Vide supra, p. 306. 

* Text in Nichols, u.s., ii. 487. 

^ Creighton, History of Epidemics in Britain, 1891, i. 536. 
" The Illness and Death of Henry, Prince of Wales, in 1612, 1882. See 
elaborate account by Sir Charles Cornwallis, in Nichols, u.s., ii. 469-87. 



426 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" 

A public mourning of nearly six months was ordered. 
The Court was to wear black till the 29th of March, 
and the wedding was fixed for May-day. ''It would 
be thought absurd," writes Chamberlain, ''that foreign 
ambassadors, coming to condole the Prince's death, 
should find us feasting and dancing : so that it is de- 
ferred till May-day. "1 The lying in state lasted till the 
7th of December, when the Prince was buried in West- 
minster Abbey. 

The espousals or "affiancing of the royal pair" took 
place on the 27th. The mourning was interrupted for 
the occasion, and the Children of the Revels from 
Whitefriars were allowed to act The Coxcomb at 
the palace. 2 The service was conducted in French, 
but according to the English ritual. The Princess 
wore black velvet, ^^ semee of crosslets or quatrefoils 
silver," and a white aigrette in her hair. The Prince 
was also in black, and wore a velvet cloak " caped with 
gold lace." The Archbishop presided at the espousals; 
Sir Thomas Lake gave out the " vJ/oz, Frederic,'' 
and ^^ Moi, Elisabeth": "I, Frederick, take thee, 
Elizabeth, to my wedded wife," etc., "and thereto I 
plight thee my troth"; "I, Elizabeth, take thee, Fre- 
derick, to my wedded husband," and so forth. The 
translation was so bad, and the responses were so 
gabbled over and badly pronounced, that the Princess 
began to laugh, and then broke into a '■^fou rire,'' in 
which the company joined, until the Archbishop ended 
the scene by reading the blessing.^ The contract pro- 
vided that these espousals should be followed by "a 
true and lawful marriage," because the betrothal of the 

^ Chamberlain to Carleton, 19 Nov. 1612, in Doni. State Papers, vol. 
Ixxi. no. 38. Text in Nichols, u.s., ii. 489. 

^ See F. G. Fleay, Biographical Chronicle of English Drama, 1891, 
i. 185-6. 

^ See Chamberlain to Carleton, 31 Dec. 1612, in Dorti. State Papers, 
U.S., no. 70; Chamberlain to Winwood, 23 Feb. 1612-13, in Winwood, 
U.S., iii. 434-5; Nichols, u.s, ii. 513-16. 



ESPOUSALS OF THE PRINCESS 427 

Princess did not amount to a marriage under the 
''family law," or "Law of the Crown," though the 
effect might have been different in the case of an 
ordinary subject. 

As soon as the betrothal was over, the Palsgrave's 
counsellors began to press for an advancement of the 
marriage, the Prince being anxious to return to Heidel- 
berg, and hoping to start about the middle of April. 
The Court mourning barely lasted over Twelfth-night. 
On the 5th of January the children from Whitefriars 
acted Cupid's Revenge before Prince Charles, the Lady 
Elizabeth, and the Prince Palatine, the Princess still 
retaining her relative rank.^ After the play Sir Thomas 
Lake wrote to his friend Carleton : "The black is 
wearing out, and the marriage pomps preparing."^ 
The household was subscribing for a masque, and the 
Inns of Court were busy at magnificent shows. 

The river sports at Shrovetide formed the people's 
share of the festivities. They began on the nth of 
February with a show of fireworks in front of the 
galleries at Whitehall. The artillery roared from 
Lambeth while St. George fought the dragon, and the 
deer was chased by flaming hounds; "and as the 
culverins played upon the Earth, the fire-works danced 
in the air." When the smoke cleared off, a Christian 
fleet was seen advancing against a Turkish fortress, 
"ships and gallies bravely rigd with top and top- 
gallant, their flagges and streamers waving like men- 
of-warr." On the Saturday there was a sea-fight off 
Whitehall Stairs between Christian and Turkish fleets 
rigged out by Mr. Bettis, the chief shipwright at 
Chatham. A fort called the Castle of Argier had been 
set up at Stangate, in Lambeth, "environed with 
craggie rocks as the Castle is now situate in Turkic." 

^ Fleay, u.s,, i. 186-7. 

^ Lake to Carleton, 6 Jan. 1613, in Dom. State Papers, vol. Ixxii. 
no. 6. 



428 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" 

The Algerine pirates first captured a Spanish argosy 
and two Venetian ships, and then an English fleet was 
seen "with their red crost streamers most gallantly 
waving in the ayre." The English Admiral took the 
pirate's galleys and the castle itself, and the Turkish 
Commander, "attired in a red jacket with blue sleeves," 
and all his bashaws and officers, were taken to the 
private stairs, where the Prince Palatine and the Lady 
Elizabeth were stationed.^ 

On Shrove Sunday, being St. Valentine's Day, the 
marriage took place in the Chapel-Royal at Whitehall. 
From Henry Peacham's Period of Mourning, ^fc, -with 
Nuptiall Hynines, we learn that it was a "sunshine 
wedding " : 

** Heaven, the first, hath throwne away 
Her weary weede of mourning hew, 
And waites Eliza's Wedding-day 
In starry-spangled gown of blew." 

The ceremonies are described in the " Old Cheque-book 
of the Chapel," and in a tract by William Burley, 
which has been quoted already. The procession 
started from the council chamber, on the river-side of 
Holbein's gate, and passed through the presence-room 
and guard-chamber to a banqueting-house erected for 
the occasion, and then crossed the courtyard by a plat- 
form set up near the north gate, and thence to the 
great chamber near the tilt-yard, and through the 
lobby, and downstairs to the chapel, "into which this 
Royal troupe marched in this order " ; first came the 
bridegroom, arrayed in cloth of silver (called "white 
satin " in some accounts), richly embroidered with 
silver, with all the young gallants and gentlemen of 
the Court ; but there entered the chapel only sixteen 
young bachelors, so many as the bridegroom was 
years old. When he was seated, the bride was intro- 
duced : "the Lady Elizabeth," says Burley, "in her 

^ Tract by William Burley, printed in Nichols, u.s,, H. 539-41. 



THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY 429 

virgin-robes, clothed in a gowne of white sattin . . . 
upon her head a crown of refined golde, made Imperiall 
by the pearls and diamonds thereupon placed, which 
were so thicke beset that they stood like shining 
pinnacles upon her amber-coloured haire, dependantly 
hanging playted downe over her shoulders to her 
waste." ^ The description in the official record is even 
more picturesque : '' She was supported or ledd by the 
Prince Charles on the righte hand, and the Earl of 
Northampton, Lord Privie Seale, on the left hand, 
attended with 16 younge Ladies and Gentlewomen of 
honor bearinge her traine, which was of cloth of silver 
as her gowne was, her hayre hanginge doune at length 
dressed with ropes of pearle, and a Coronett uppon 
her head richly dect with precious stones."^ Opinions 
differed about the appearance of the King and Queen. 
The official report described them as gloriously arrayed. 
The King wore the great diamond in his felt hat ; but 
John Chamberlain wrote: "The King, me thought, 
was somewhat strangely attired, in a cap and feathers, 
with a Spanish cope and a long stocking." The 
Queen wore all her jewels, "a Lady walled about with 
diamonds " ; and it was agreed on all sides that their 
Majesties must have carried at least a million's worth 
of jewels between them.^ 

The form of the banns is preserved in the Old Cheque- 
book of the Chapel-Royal at Whitehall. The first 
asking was in these terms, and they were all in a 
similar form: "I aske the banes of matrimonie be- 
tween the two great Princes, Fredericke Prince Elector 
Count Palatine of Reine of the one partie, and the 
Lady Elizabethe her Grace, the only daughter of the 
highe and mightie King of Great Brittany of the other 

1 Id., pp. 541-9. 

^ Old Cheque-hook of the Chapel Royal, ed. Rimbault, p. 164. 
^ Chamberlain to Alice Carleton, 18 Feb. 1613, in Dom. State Papers, 
Ixxii. no. 30. Text in Nichols, ^i.s., ii. 588. 



430 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" 

partie. If any man can shew any cause why these two 
Princes may not be lawfully joyned in matrimony, let 
him speake, for this is [the first time of asking]." The 
memorandum continues : " First asked in the Chappell 
at Whithall the last daye of Januarie, 1612, (1613, New 
Style), and there also the second of Februarie next 
followinge the second tyme, and the third tyme at 
Winsore the 7th daie of the foresaid Februarie. The 
Prince Palatine beinge installed Knight of the Garter 
the same daie."^ Mention is made in Ward's Diary of 
a double calling of the banns ; Mr. Washburn, of 
Oriel, was the Vicar's authority: " I have heard that 
King James would have his daughter askt three times 
in the church, which accordingly shee was, in St. 
Margaret's, Westminster." ^ 

The whole assembly being settled in their places, 
the service began with an anthem, followed by a 
sermon by the Dean (James Montague, Bishop of 
Bath and Wells) ; while another anthem was in sing- 
ing, the Archbishop and Dean put on their "rich 
copes," and after the singing was over ascended 
the steps of the throne, "where these Two great 
Princes were married by the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, in all points according to the Book of Common 
Prayer ; the Prince Palatine speaking the words of 
marriage in English after the Archbishop."^ 

Their Majesties retired after the wedding, the bride 
and bridegroom dining in state in the new banqueting- 
hall ; * and after dinner the household presented The 
Masque of Frantics, composed by Dr. Campion, with 
scenery by Inigo Jones. ^ There was a revolving firma- 
ment, and stars moving in their spheres. " I suppose," 
said Campion, "fewe have ever seene more neate arti- 
fice than Master Innigoe Jones showed in contriving" 

'1 Old Cheque-Book, u.s., p. 163. ^ Vide supra, p. 254. 

3 Tract in Nichols, ti.s., ii. 546-7. ^ Id., 548. 

^ The Lords' Mas ke, printed in Nichols, u.s., ii. 554765. 



SHROVE SUNDAY AND MONDAY, 1613 431 

this '' motion." 1 The argument was dull, and wanting 
in light and shade ; all the characters were mad, and 
the ladies complained that *'it was more like a Play 
than a Masque." " 

Shrove Monday was devoted to sports in the tilt- 
yard. The tilting itself was arranged like a scene in 
a comedy. The King took the ring on his spear three 
times, and the trumpets sounded, and the people 
shouted for joy. The Palatine took it twice, and the 
crowd roared again, and his own silver trumpets 
saluted the Prince of the Rhine. Little Prince Charles 
rode five times and scored four rings, "a sight of much 
admiration, and an exceeding comfort to all the land."^ 
The glory of such sports, said Lord Bacon, depended 
on the '* bravery" of the liveries, and the ''goodly 
furniture " of the horses and armour,^ so that perhaps 
we should mention some of the tradesmen, whose bills 
are preserved to this day. The Guards wore scarlet, 
with velvet facings, provided by Mr. Danson, His 
Majesty's tailor ; the spangles and circles came from 
Mr. Giles Simpson, the Court goldsmith ; and all the 
embroidery was supplied by Mr. William Broderick, 
successor to Mr. Parr of Blackfriars, who had been 
for twenty-five years embroiderer to Queen Elizabeth 
and the reigning King. 

In the evening, the gentlemen of Lincoln's Inn and 
the Middle Temple rode in procession through the 
Strand to Whitehall. They started from the Rolls 
House in Chancery Lane, Sir Edward Phelips leading 
the way, with witty Dick Martin, whom the King 
delighted to honour. Sixty gentlemen rode after them 
upon armoured chargers, with torch-bearers and pages 
at their sides. Then came a rabble-rout of boys on 
ponies and donkeys, with monkey-faces for the anti- 
masque ; they wore Italian hats and cart-wheel ruffs, 

^ Id., p. 558. '^ Chamberlain to Winwood, u.s., p. 426, note 3. 

^ Tract in Nichols, u.s., ii. 549-50. ■* Bacon, Essays, xxxvii. 



432 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

or starched '* pickadills," and as they rode they tossed 
handfuls of " cockle-demoys " among the crowd. After 
them came the cars and pageants. In one of them the 
musicians sat, disguised as Virginian conjurers, in 
turbans lit up with fireflies and bright with plumes ; in 
another sat the Emperor Powhatan and his Indian 
lords ; and in a third the Goddess of Honour was en- 
throned, arrayed in welkin-blue, and her fair tresses 
**in tucks braided up with silver." On reaching the 
Palace the cortege passed through the gateway by 
Scotland Yard, and so through the tilt-yard into the 
park, riding round the buildings till they came to 
the banqueting-hall ; and here they performed the 
masque, written by George Chapman, and sang the 
nuptial ode, which appears in the printed book.^ 

On Shrove Tuesday the King held a grand recep- 
tion. "In the evening," wrote Chamberlain, ''there 
was much expectation of a Play, to be acted in the 
Great Hall by the King's Players, and many hundreds 
of people were taking up their positions for it. But it 
had been arranged that the Gentlemen of the Inner 
Temple and Gray's Inn should present a Masque called 
The Marriage of the Thames and Rhine, devised by Sir 
Francis Bacon, with words by Frank Beaumont."^ This 
entertainment brought in many witty allusions to The 
Tempest. The procession came by water, from Win- 
chester House upon Bank-side up the river to White- 
hall Stairs, and the gateway between the crowded long 
windows of the galleries. The dresses, it was agreed, 
were magnificent, Sir Francis and the poet in velvet, 
the masqueraders in cloth of gold, "with other robes," 
said the ladies, "of much delight and pleasure." All 
went well at first, John Chamberlain reports in a letter 
of gossip to Miss Alice Carleton ; but when they 

^ Tract in Nichols, u.s., ii. 550- i. See Chamberlain's letter of 18 Feb., 
U.S., and full account of procession and masque in Nichols, ii. 566-86. 
^ Printed in Nichols, u.s., ii. 591-600. 



MASQUE OF THE TWO INNS 433 

reached the hall, " O, spite of spites," there was 
nothing but a new Comedy of Errors, "By what ill 
planet it fell out I know not ; they came home as they 
went without doing anything." The King was tired 
out and dazed with sleep. Bacon remembered what 
His Majesty had said when the Prince was becoming 
too popular. ''They are trying to bury me quick," 
said King James. They tried to rouse him with an 
echo of his royal wit: "Nay, your Majesty, do not 
bury us quick!" "Well then," said the King, "you 
must bury me quick, for I can last no longer." The 
masque was perforce adjourned until the Saturday 
evening ; and the gentlemen went sadly back to their 
barges, having shown all their new dresses for nothing. 
When they returned on the Saturday, they were shown 
into the banqueting-hall, where noisy revels were 
going on, and there was a terrible squeezing and 
jostling.^ "All is nothing," Lord Bacon notes in his 
Essay, "except the room be kept clear and neat."^ 
The Lady Bess came in to see the masque, though she 
had been laughing all the afternoon over The Dutch 
Courtesan^ as presented by her own players in the 
Cock-pit. The show passed off very well, amid showers 
of compliments ; and Sir Francis Bacon and his friend 
Beaumont, with forty other " Inns-of-Court Men," were 
invited to a solemn banquet in the same pavilion next 
night. 

The King won the expenses of the banquet from the 
Palatine and his German knights in a Sunday morning 
tilt. The winners had all the amusement, for the room 
was so small that there was no space for the losers to 
sit down ; and a letter from young Lady Rich is still 
preserved among the State Papers, complaining that 
her husband "had to pay ;^30, and could not even 
have a drink for his money." 

^ Id., pp. 589-90. ■^ Bacon, u.s. 

2 F 



434 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 



II 

PLAYS ACTED AT WHITEHALL AND HAMPTON COURT, 1613 — 
STORY OF THE " VERTUE MSS. " 

It is possible to get near the exact date at which The 
Tempest was performed in the pretty Court-theatre at 
Whitehall. We have the list of plays shown before 
Prince Charles, the Lady Elizabeth, and the Pals- 
grave, who was styled "Prince Palatine" after the 
espousals ; and since that contract, said Chamberlain, 
was "usually prayed for in the Church among the 
King's Children."^ After the wedding he was com- 
monly called "His Highness, Count Palatine." We 
have seen that the Princess had precedence, till she 
was married, so that we know which plays were acted 
before February the 14th ; but after that day there was 
an immediate change, which may be illustrated by the 
following examples. On the 20th of February her 
company were paid the usual £^. 13^-. 4^. for acting 
Cockle-demoy , before Bacon and Beaumont presented 
their masque, the comedy being played "before the 
Prince's Highness Count Palatine Elector and the 
Lady Elizabeth " ; and on June the 7th, William 
Rowley was paid on behalf of the Prince's Company 
for performing the first and second parts of The Knaves 
on the 2nd and the 5th of March, "before His High- 
ness Count Palatine and the Lady Elizabeth."^ We 
know that from the 9th of January the Court-mourning 
had been relaxed, so that it became allowable to enjoy 
the sorrows of the stage. The King left London for 
Royston and Newmarket on January the i ith, the 
Prince Palatine remaining in town. John Chamberlain 

^ Chamberlain to Winwood, 9 Jan. 161 2-13. Text in Winwood, 
U.S., ii. 421 ; Nichols, ti.s., ii. 515. 

^ P. Cunningfham, Plays acted at Court Anno i6jj (Shakespeare 
Society's Papers, 1844-9, "• 124). 



PLAYS AT WHITEHALL 435 

wrote to Sir Ralph Winwood on the subject. ''The 
day of the King's departure hence, the Lord Arch- 
bishop feasted the Palsgrave's followers, which he took 
so kindly that, when they were ready to sit down, 
himself came, though he were neither invited nor ex- 
pected. The Entertainment was very great, and such 
as became the giver and receiver. The Prince Palatine 
goes to be installed at Windsor the seventh of the next 
month. . . , Yesternight (the 28th of January), the 
Prince Palatine feasted all the Councill at Essex House, 
where, in regard of the good entertainment he found 
with the Archbishop, he showed more kindness and 
caresses to him and his followers than to all the rest 
put together. "1 

We may fairly suppose that soon after the King's de- 
parture the Royal Company were ordered to attend with 
their repertoire. We take an early date for convenience, 
and reckon that the Royal Company began their set 
of fourteen plays for the Princess about the 15th 
January. The King returned to Whitehall on the 
2nd of February and left again on the 5th. There is 
a separate list of plays presented before him on a 
different scale of payments ; and it is possible that in 
the short stay in London he may have seen "one play 
called A had beginning makes a good ending" perhaps 
a shorter version of All's Well that ends Well, Fletcher's 
Captain, or Jonson's Alchemist. The Palatine's absence 
at Windsor and his attendance at the public sports 
when he returned fill up the period so closely that we 
may suppose the fourteen plays to have been acted 
during the last sixteen days of January, omitting the 
28th, on account of the entertainment at Essex House. 
The Tempest was sixth on the list, so that it was prob- 
ably performed on the 21st of January, or close upon 
that time.^ 

1 Chamberlain to Winwood, 29 Jan. 1612-13. Text in Winwood, 
U.S., ii. 428-30; Nichols, u.s., ii. 517. ^ Cunningham, w.s., p. 125. 



436 PRODUCTION OF *'THE TEMPEST" 

The Palatine was installed in St. George's Chapel 
on the 7th of February. Mr. Nichols gives us an 
account of the ceremony from the relation of Mr. 
Howes: "The Palsgrave in person, and the Grave 
Maurice by his deputie Count Lodowic of Nassau, his 
cousin, were installed as Knights of the Garter at 
Windsor, in the presence of the King, Prince, and 
Nobility."^ We learn from a letter from Chamberlain 
to Sir Dudley Carleton that the King and the Princes 
came back to London on Tuesday, the gth of February.^ 
We may allow two days for the journey to Windsor, 
for the preparations and unpacking, and perhaps a 
day's rest after a long, cold ride. We can imagine the 
bustle and tumult through the whole countryside by 
reading what the Welsh parson said of all the hosts '' of 
Readins, of Maidenhead, of Colebrook, of horses and 
money," and remembering from the same Merry Wives 
of Windsor how Dr. Caius bawled in French-English 
for the host of the Garter: "Here, Master Doctor, in 
perplexity and doleful dilemma." "I cannot tell vat 
is dat ; but it is tell-a me dat you make grand prepara- 
tion for a duke de Jamany." ^ 

The lists of plays acted at Court, as it appears in the 
Shakespeare Society^s Papers^ was said to be taken 
"from the accounts of Lord Harrington, Treasurer of 
the Chamber to King James L" Mr. Cunningham, who 
edited the article, intended perhaps to refer to John, 
Lord Harington of Exton, cousin of Sir John Haring- 
ton, translator of the Orlando^ The list is to be 
ascribed in reality to John, Lord Stanhope of Harring- 
ton, who was Lord Treasurer of the King's chamber 

1 Nichols, U.S., ii. 522-3. 

2 Chamberlain to Carleton, 11 Feb. 1613, Dom. State Papers, Ixxii. 
no. 26. Text in Nichols, ^l.s., ii. 524. 

3 ][ferr;y Wives of Windsor, iv. 5, 80-9. 

■* Lord Harington of Exton had been guardian of the Princess in 
1605 ; he escorted her to Germany after her marriage, and died at 
Worms as he returned. 



LORD STANHOPE OF HARRINGTON 437 

in 1613, and held the office till 1618. The reversion 
to his place had at one time been procured for the 
unfortunate Overbury ; but it was purchased by 
Sir William Uvedale soon after "the poisoning 
business."^ 

The Treasurer of the Chamber was in effect the 
director of the King's amusements. As King James 
loved outdoor sports, Lord Stanhope's business was 
chiefly concerned with hunting and hawking at Theo- 
balds Park. There are numerous entries on the sub- 
ject among the Domestic State Papers and the copies 
of Danish Archives at the Public Record Office. We 
may read of the gerfalcons from Iceland, a herd of 
great stags from Denmark, tame elks brought from the 
forests between Norway and Sweden, and a cheetah, or 
hunting-leopard, which we assume to have been "a 
present from the Sophy." The Treasurer accounted 
for the expense of the never-ending progresses, the 
hunting at Royston, the tennis at Hampton Court, the 
plays, masques, and Court entertainments. 

By the list before us we find that The Tempest must 
have been acted at Whitehall about the 22nd of January, 
1612, Old Style, or 1613, by the "historical reckoning." 
The accounts show a payment to Mr. John Heminge of 
;^93. 6>r. 8^. for presenting fourteen several plays. This 
was the correct amount, according to the ancient scale 
of fees ; but in some copies, and among others in 
Mr. Cunningham's paper, the amount was stated as 
£<^\. 6j. 8^., perhaps merely a copyist's error. 

The Privy Council records show that John Heminge, 
as Treasurer to the King's Players, received ;^8o on 
a warrant of the 19th of May, 161 3, for eight perform- 
ances before His Majesty. Some of them may have 
taken place at Whitehall ; but Steevens puts down 
six of them, at any rate, as having been shown at 

1 See Dom. State Papers, i July 1615 (vol. Ixxxi.), and letter from 
Chamberlain to Carleton, 13 July {ibid., no. 15). 



438 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

Hampton Court. ^ The amount of i^8o was made up 
as follows. The official fee for a play was ten marks, or 
£^. \2,s. \d. ; when the King was present, he added a gift 
of ten nobles, or ^^3. 6^". 8^. The mark and noble were 
"monies of account," the one taken at 13^-. 4^. and the 
other at 6s. 8d. The King's gift of ten nobles made 
the ten marks into ten pounds. 

Six of these plays are mentioned in the Lord 
Treasurer's account, under the titles of A Bad Begin- 
ning makes a Good Endings The Captain^ The A Ichemist, 
"one other, Cardano, one other. Hotspur, and one other 
called Benedicite and Betteris " ; the account ending, 
"paid fortie poundes, and by way of his Majestie's 
rewarde twenty pounds more, in all ;^6o." Cardenno, 
or Cardema, was also acted, according to the Lord 
Treasurer's accounts, on the 8th of June, 1613, before 
the Duke of Savoy's Ambassador. It was one of these 
plays, not even included in the "spurious list," which 
was attributed to Shakespeare by audacious booksellers 
long after his death. ^ 

The fourteen plays were acted before Prince Charles, 
the Lady Elizabeth, and Frederick, Prince Palatine, 
with their lords and ladies in attendance. The 
titles of the plays are given in the order of their per- 
formance on those leaves of Lord Stanhope's office- 
book, which are often called "the Vertue MSS." The 
memoranda run as follows: ^^ Item, paid to John 
Heminges uppon the Cowncell's warrant dated att 
Whitehall XX° die Maii, 1613, for presentinge before 
the Princes Highnes, the Lady Elizabeth, and the 
Prince Pallatyne Elector, fowerteene severalle playes, 
viz., one playe called Pilaster, one other called the 
Knott of Fooles, one other Much Adoe abowte nothinge, 
the Mayed's Tragedy, the vierye dyvell of Edmonton, 

^ Steevens, Shakespeare, ed. Reed, 1803, vi. 182. 

^ Cunning'ham, ti-.s., p. 125. See New Shakspere Society's Transactions, 
1895-6, part ii. p. 419. 



''THE MAID'S TRAGEDY," ETC. 439 

the Tempest, A Kinge and no kinge, the Twins Tragedie, 
the Winters Tale, Sir John Falstafe, the Moore of 
Venice, the Nobleman, Caesar's Tragedye, and one other 
called Love lyes a bleedinge, all which playes weare 
played within the time of this accompte, viz., iiij^x xiij 
li, vis. viij d." 

The full title of the first play was Philaster ; or, Love 
lies a-bleeding. It has been supposed that this master- 
piece of Beaumont and Fletcher was twice commanded 
by the Princess ; but the list, on the other hand, was 
announced as containing "fourteen several Plays," and 
it seems likely that the last entry referred to some short 
interlude adapted from the famous original. Philaster 
and The Maid's Tragedy long continued to be the 
objects of universal admiration ; and Waller expressed 
the popular verdict, though his neat mind was shocked 
at their vigour of thought and language : 

" Of all our elder plays 
This and Philaster have the loudest fame ; 
Great are their faults, and glorious is their flame. 
In both our English genius is expressed ; 
Lofty and bold, but negligently dressed. "^ 

The plot of The Maid's Tragedy is flat regicide, and 
it was not surprising that Charles II. was disposed to 
prohibit its performance ; but Waller retouched the 
piece with such zeal that everyone was killed except the 
King, and it was found necessary in a still later version 
to despatch the King after all.^ "It was agreeable," 
said his editor, "to the sweetness of Mr. Waller's temper, 
to soften the rigor of the Tragedy . . . but, whether 
it be so agreeable to the nature of Tragedy it self, to 
make everything come off easily, I leave to the Critics."^ 

^ Prologue to The Maid's Tragedy in Waller's Poems, ed. G. Thorn 
Drury, 1893, p. 224. 

2 See A. W. Ward, Eng. Dram. Lit, 1893, ii. 673, where the doubtful 
reason of the impending- prohibition is discussed in a note. 

^ Elijah Fenton, Preface to the second part of Waller's Poems, 1729, 
pp. 446-7. 



440 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

A King and 7io King of Beaumont and Fletcher 
was a fine piece, "always received with applause." 
Rymer made a severe attack upon it in his letter on the 
Tragedies of the Last Age. He seemed to forget that 
the plays in Shakespeare's time were not tragedies or 
comedies on the strict classical model, but scenes from 
human life, which you might call tragi-comedies, or 
interludes, or what one pleased. A King and no King 
was licensed in 1611. The plot, it was admitted, had 
proportion or shape, and '*(at the first sight) an outside 
fair enough." But the characters were not like Rymer's 
classical favourites. They were "all improbable and 
improper in the highest degree," he said, and ran quite 
wide of the design ; " nothing could be imagined more 
contrary." "We blunder along without the least streak 
of life, till in the last act we stumble on the Plot, lying 
all in a lump together." The Queen is nothing but a 
Patient Grissel, and Panthea must have had "a knock 
in her cradle ; so soft she is at all points, and so silly. 
No Linsey-woolsey Shepherdess but must have more 
soul in her, and more sense of decency (not to say) 
honour."^ 

The Merry Devil of Edmonton, the next piece of im- 
portance, was a stock piece at the Globe, where the 
prentices rejoiced in the tavern-wit and the merry 
knight who reminded them of Falstaff.^ The author- 
ship of the piece is unknown. It was printed in the 
volume labelled Shakespeare's Plays , vol. ii., which 
belonged to Charles the Second's library. It was even 
licensed as "by Shakespeare" in the Stationer's Register 
for 1653 ; and after the Restoration it was sold by Kirk- 
man, the bookseller, with Shakespeare's name on the 

^ Rymer, Tragedies of the Last Age., 1678, pp. 56-70. 

^ Howell mentions the play under the name of '■^ Smug the Smith," 
from one of its popular characters, in Epp. Ho-El. , p. 247 (i. § 5, let. i. : 
York, 13 July 1627). See id., p. 451 (ii. let. 54: Westm., 17 Oct. 1634). 
Mr. Jacobs, in his notes, apparently has overlooked the fact that this is 
a synonym for The Merry Devil. 



*^A KING AND NO KING," ETC. 441 

title. ^ Charles Lamb quoted certain passages to show, 
by way of excuse, that the play had something of 
Shakespeare's sweetness and good nature. *' It seems 
written to make the reader happy. Few of our drama- 
tists or novelists have attended enough to this. They 
torture and wound us abundantly. They are econom- 
ists only in delight." He wished that Michael Drayton 
could be shown to have written the piece, ^ but for this 
there was no evidence, except a story of Mr. Coxeter, 
the bookseller, who had seen a copy with a memor- 
andum that it was '* by Michael Drayton." William 
Oldys had heard the same thing, but did not lend his 
authority to the suggestion ; and on the subject of 
Drayton's works the judgment of Oldys is supreme.^ 
Hazlitt ascribed the play to Thomas Heywood,* but in 
this case also there is a complete absence of proof. 

The Knot of Fools may have been Chapman's All 
Fools, though the word ''knot" implies a limit of 
number.^ There was also a ''comical-moral" piece, 
called Two Wise Men and All the Rest Fools, ^ but as 
it was in seven long acts we can hardly suppose that 
it was included in the performances "by Command." 
Little or nothing is known of the other plays on the list. 
The Nobleman suggests the title of Fletcher's Noble 
Gentleman^ but this was not licensed till 3rd February, 
1626.^ As to The Twins, there was a tragi-comedy of 
that name, by William Rider, acted by Davenant's 
Company at Salisbury Court,^ but nothing seems to be 

^ Langfbaine, Acct, Eng. Dram. Poets, 1691, p. 541. 

^ Lamb, Specimens of Eiiglish Dramatic Poets, (Bohn's ed.), p. 48, note. 

^ Oldys' MS., note to Lang-baine u.s.,^. 541 : "It has been said too 
that Michael Drayton was the Author." 

^ Hazlitt, Lecttires on Literature of Age of Elizabeth (Bohn's ed.), 
p. 169. ^ Vide supra, p. 331. ® See Fleay, ti.s., ii. 333-4. 

''' Sir H. Herbert's Office Book, quoted in Collier, Annals of the Stage, 
1831, i. 437, note. 

^ Fleay, ti.s., ii., 149, states that The Twins, by R. Niccols (entered 
Stat. Reg. 15 Feb. 1612) was the play acted at Court. Rider's pla)'^ 
(id., 170) was probably a revival. 



442 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

known about the author or his play, except that he 
called himself a Master of Arts, and that Langbaine 
judged from the style that the play was an old one.^ 

Shakespeare and Fletcher divide the honours of the 
list. Jonson's name only appeared when the King 
gave a supplemental ''command." Shakespeare was 
still regarded as supreme ; Fletcher was almost too 
witty, and he offended against "the decorum of the 
stage." But his raillery was "so dressed," says 
Langbaine, that it rather pleased than disgusted ;^ and 
the list of plays, if closely scrutinised, seems to show a 
preference for comedy in a court costume. 

CcBsar's Tragedy we take as being Shakespeare's 
Julius Ccesar, sometimes called "Julius Caesar his 
tragedy," or simply "Csesar," as in the encomium 
of Leonard Digges : 

" So have I seene, when Cesar would appeare, 
And on the stag^e at halfe-sword parley were, 
Brutus and Cassias, how the audience 
Were ravish'd ! with what wonder they went thence."^ 

Malone and G. Chalmers took their information from 
Vertue, through a transcript made by Oldys : "It 
appears from the papers of the late Mr. George Vertue, 
that a Play called Cesar's Tragedy was acted at court 
before the loth of April, in the year 1613. This was 
probably Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, it being much 
the fashion at that time to alter the titles of his Plays."* 
There were, of course, several pieces on the same sub- 

^ Langbaine, u.s., p. 427 : " Of which University or Colledge, is to me 
unknown. . . . This Play is not contemptible, either as to the Lang-uag-e, 
Oeconomy of it, tho" I judge it older far than the Date of it imports." 
Oldys altered Langbaine's ascription of Rider's date from Charles the 
Second's reign to "James the First," confusing Rider and Niccols. 

^ Langbaine, u.s., p. 204. See Dryden, Essay on Dramatic Poetry of 
the Last Age, in Works, ed. Scott and Saintsbury, iv. 229. 

'' Verses prefixed to Shakespeare's poems, 1640. Printed in Halliwell- 
Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 89 

^ Malone's Shakespeare, ed. Boswell, ii. 450-1. 



''CESAR'S TRAGEDY," ETC. 443 

ject; but none of them were likely to have been selected 
for the occasion. The JtUius Ccesar oi W. Alexander 
(afterwards Earl of ''Sterline") was one of his four 
Monarchicke Tragedies, intended only for reading in 
the library. ^ 

We learn something about the first appearance of 
the Winter's Tale from the old Office-book quoted by 
Malone and Collier. ^ This book had been kept by 
Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels to Charles I. 
Nothing had been heard of it for nearly a century, 
when it was found by a curious accident. Horace 
Walpole was editing the Life of Lord Herbert of Cher- 
bury from a stained and torn MS. at Lymore, and 
had made vain inquiries about a duplicate once belong- 
ing to Lord Herbert's brother, Sir Henry Herbert of 
Ribbisford. At last, in the year 1727, this duplicate 
was sent to Lord Powis by a gentleman who had 
bought the estate at Ribbisford ; it appeared that a 
great oak chest had been allowed to go with the house, 
and in this chest were found the duplicate *' Life," and 
various books and papers, including the Office-book 
of Sir Henry Herbert, with notes from August, 1623, 
onwards. On the 19th of August, 1623, Sir Henry 
made a note of a visit from old Mr. Heminge : "For 
the king's players. An olde playe called Winter's 
Tale, formerly allowed of by Sir George Bucke, and 
likewise by mee on Mr. Hemmings his worde that there 
was nothing profane added or reformed, thogh the 
allowed booke was missing ; and therefore I returned 
it without a fee."^ The play seems to have been 
popular, but in 1741 it was announced, during the 
Shakespearean revival, that The Merchant of Venice 
and the Winter's Tale had not been performed for a 

^ Printed in Scotland, 1604 ; in London, 1607. See A. W. Ward, 
op. cit., ii. 138, 140, on this and other plays bearing on the subject. 

^ See Malone's long- note on Sir Henry Herbert's Office-Book, op. cit., 
iii. 57-9. ^ Id., iii. 229. 



444 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

century, and that AlVs Well that Ends Well had been 
last acted in Shakespeare's time. With respect to the 
boatswain's curses in The Tempest^ we should note that 
the Master of the Revels took a very stringent view 
of " profaneness." On January 9th, 1633, we have 
a note about Davenant's play of The Wits. Herbert 
had crossed out "faith," ''slight," and similar ex- 
pressions ; but the King took him to the window, and 
showed the play with the words reinserted: "The kinge 
is pleased to take faith^ death, slight, for asseverations, 
and no oaths, to which I doe humbly submit as my 
master's judgment ; but under favour conceive them to 
be oaths, and enter them here, to declare my opinion 
and submission. The 10 of January, 1633, I returned 
unto Mr. Davenant his playe-booke of The Wits, 
corrected by the king."^ 

Mr. Steevens had a misleading note on the perform- 
ances in the Supplemental List. ^^ Much ado about 
Nothing,'''' he says, "(as I understand from one of Mr. 
Vertue's MSS.) formerly passed under the title of 
Benedick and Beatrix. Heming the player received, on 
the 20th of May, 1613, the sum of forty pounds, and 
twenty pounds more as his Majesty's gratuity, for ex- 
hibiting six Plays at Hampton Court, among which 
was this comedy. "2 Steevens had taken a copy of a 
transcript by Oldys, which came to Sir S. Egerton 
Brydges, and was bought by Dr. Birch at the Lee 
Priory sale, and afterwards deposited in the British 
Museum. Mr. Cunningham's statement in the Shake- 
speare Society Papers seems to be incorrect. He said 
that the list of plays as there printed was taken from 
the copy by Steevens,^ but it probably came from the 
annotated Langbaine, described in Heber's Catalogue 
as "Langbaine, with many important additions by 

1 Id., iii. 235. 

■^ Steevens in Variorum Shakespeare, 1803, vi. 182. 

•^ Cunningham, us., p. 123. 



''MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING," ETC. 445 

Oldys, Steevens, and Reed," which is also in the 
British Museum. 

Seeing the difference in the titles, one might rather 
expect that Benedict and Beatrix was not the same as 
Mtich Ado about Nothing. It may well have been an 
abridgement, with the addition of characters from out- 
side. It is common knowledge that this practice was 
adopted when required. A Midsummer Nighfs Dream 
is an example in point. When plays were forbidden, it 
appeared as an interlude of clowns and strolling players. 
During the Commonwealth it was acted as Bottom's 
Dream at the fairs. ^ Benedict and Beatrix may have 
been a travesty of the same kind. For this we have 
the testimony of Leonard Digges in the verses pre- 
fixed to Shakespeare's Poems in 1640. It is clear that 
Malvolio had been brought in from Twelfth Night to 
pad out the witty scenes between Signior Benedick and 
Lady Beatrice : 

*' Let but Beatrice 
And Benedicke be seen, loe, in a trice 
The cockpit, galleries, boxes, all are full 
To hear Malvoglio, that crosse-garter'd gull."^ 

The Hotspur^ again, as acted at Hampton Court, may 
have been made up of extracts from the first part 
of King Henry IV. A separate play was put together 
for Falstaff, composed of scenes from both parts of 
King Henry IV. and The Merry Wives of Windsor. 
Something may have been borrowed from the death- 
scene in Henry V, so pitifully described by Mistress 
Nell Pistol, better known as Dame Quickly of East- 
cheap and Staines, or the "Quondam Quickley."^ 
These were hints useful for expansion in the epilogue 
to Henry IV., where a promise was made which the 
Cobhams would never allow to be fulfilled: "Our 
humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in 

^ Vzde supra, pp. 187-8, and Ward, op. cit, ii. 86. 
'^ Vide supra, p. 442, note 3. '^ Henry V., ii. 3. 



446 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" 

it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France : 
where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a 
sweat, unless already a' be killed with your hard 
opinions ; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not 
the man." Fuller's words would be appropriate to a 
made-up *' Falstaff," but he can hardly be suspected 
of an attack upon the memory of Shakespeare: "Sir 
John Falstaff hath relieved the memory of Sir John 
Oldcastle, and of late is substituted buffoon in his 
place ; but it matters as little what petulant poets, as 
what malicious papists have written against him."^ 
He added in his Worthies of England: " Now as I am 
glad that Sir John Oldcastle is put out, so I am sorry 
that Sir John Fastolfe is put in, to relieve his memory 
in this base service, to be the anvil for every dull wit to 
strike on."^ It appears from an entry in Sir Henry 
Herbert's note-book that Sir John Falstaff was in two 
parts, the first part having been acted on New Year's 
Eve, 1624-5, by the King's Company in the Cockpit at 
Whitehall.^ We learn also from the verses by Digges 
that the "wild Prince" and Poins were both in the 
play. He was noticing the dislike of the public for 
tedious " Catiline " and irksome " Seganus" : 

' ' And though the Fox and subtill Alchimist, 
Long intermitted, could not quite be mist, 
Though these have sham'd all the ancients, and might raise 
Their authour's merit with a crowne of bayes, 
Yet Jhese sometimes, even at a friends desire 
Acted, have scarce defrai'd the sea coale fire 
And doore-keepers : when, let but Falstaffe come. 
Hall, Poines, the rest, you scarce shall have a roome, 
All is so pester'd. " 

Steevens gave the title of "the Vertue MSS." to the 
leaf from Lord Stanhope's book. But the name properly 

^ Fuller, Church History of Britain (ed. Nichols, 1868), iii. 568. 
2 Fuller, Worthies of England (ed. Nuttall, 1840), ii. 455. Sub 
Worthies of Norfolk ; Soldiers. 
^ Malone, u.s.y iii. 228. 



THE VERTUE MSS. 447 

belonged to the whole collection of miscellaneous papers 
got together by George Vertue, the celebrated engraver. 
He began to gather materials for a History of Art as early 
as the year 17 13. He paid great attention to the archi- 
tecture of London, and his library included the plans 
used in Rocque's Survey, and the note-books of Nicholas 
Stone, the master-mason, who put up Spenser's monu- 
ment in the Abbey, and built the existing banqueting- 
house at Whitehall. In the Memoir of W. Oldys, by 
Mr. Yeowell, we find an extract from the antiquary's 
note-book, dated the 27th of September, 1749: "Mr. 
Vertue sent me a transcript of King Charles his Patent 
to Ben Jonson for ;^ioo per annum. Also extracts from 
the accounts of Lord Stanhope, Treasurer of the Cham- 
ber to King James, from the Year 1613 to 1616, relating 
to the payment of the Players for acting of Plays in and 
between those Years at Court. "^ Mr. G. Chalmers used 
the term "Vertue MSS." in the same careless way when 
he wrote about a point in his Supplemental Apology: 
"There is a note subjoined to the Manuscripts of Vertue, 
which about thirty years ago were lent to Mr. Steevens 
by Mr. Garrick." The great actor may have got much 
information from Steevens when they were arranging 
the Stratford Jubilee of 1769 ; but it is well known that 
the engraver's general collection was purchased en bloc 
by Horace Walpole for the library at Strawberry Hill. 
Vertue's notes on the history of Art became, in fact, 
the foundation of Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting in 
England. To show how difficult it would be to trace 
the paper copied for Oldys and Garrick, we may refer 
to a correspondence mentioned in Prior's Life of Malone. 
The critic first inquired, without success, about a docu- 
ment connected with Shakespeare, supposed to be with 
Mrs. Eva Garrick at Hampton ; and he then inquired 
about the history of a painting by Carlo Maratti. 
Walpole replied that he thought it came from some 

^ A Literary Antiquary : Memoir of William Oldys, 1862, p. 32. 



448 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" 

note by Vertue, but could not be sure : ''All Vertue's 
memorandums were indigested, and written down suc- 
cessively as he made them in forty volumes, often on 
loose scraps of paper, so it is next to impossible to find 
the note."^ 

The paper sent by Vertue to W. Oldys was doubtless 
thrown into the bag of clippings which he called his 
" Shakespeare Budget," which was lost in the confusion 
of his sale ; but he transcribed the contents into his 
Second Annotated Langhaine, in the form of marginal 
notes ; and this copy was purchased by Dr. Birch, and 
was bequeathed by him to the British Museum. The 
notes in this volume were highly esteemed for their 
minute learning, and were several times copied. Bishop 
Percy, for instance, borrowed the book from Dr. Birch, 
and wrote out the ''marginalia" in four interleaved vol- 
umes; "His Lordship," said Mr. Joseph Haslewood, 
" was so kind as to favour me with the loan of this book, 
with a generous permission to make what use of it I 
might think proper, and when he went to Ireland he 
left it with Mr. Nichols for the benefit of the new edition 
of the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian." ^ Malone's 
copy seems to have been taken from these interleaved 
volumes, though he had access to all the papers that 
were inspected by Bishop Percy ; it is now among the 
" Malone MSS. " at the Bodleian Library. 

The original leaves from the Treasurer's Ofiice-book 
were saved from destruction by Samuel Pepys, who not 
only loved his library, but treasured everything relating 
to stage-plays, and to The Tempest above all other 
plays. He studied to the best of his power the con- 
ditions of London life in the past, with special reference 
to the development of the English Drama. So great 

^ Prior, Life of Malone, i860, pp. 126-7. 

2 Haslewood's Langhaine : MS. notes by Joseph Haslewood, vol. i. 
extra leaf 9. He tells us that Bishop Percy's interleaved copy "very 
narrowly escaped the flames, and was much injured by the water thrown 
in to quench the fire at Northumberland House." 



PEPYS AND LORD STANHOPE'S MS. 449 

were his accumulations of plays and ballads that some 
called him the Father of Black-letter Collectors. Dr. 
Dibdin, the arbiter of such matters, would not class 
him with ''the Black-letter Dogs"; but he said that 
Mr. Secretary Pepys was a Bibliomaniac "of the very 
first order and celebrity." He kept his books and 
papers till his death in that "very noble house and 
sweet place " at Clapham, which John Evelyn so affec- 
tionately described.^ The library was left en bloc to 
Magdalene College, Cambridge, in the hope of keep- 
ing it entire ; and there, to borrow a phrase from 
Oldys, among the folios peeped out his black-letter 
ballads, "and penny merriments, penny witticisms, 
penny compliments, and penny godlinesses." This 
was the critical moment for our ^^ Tempest manu- 
script " ; for, as a matter of fact, the list of plays 
performed at Whitehall did not go to Cambridge with 
the rest. Dr. Richard Rawlinson, "a Bishop among 
the Nonjurors," collected everything in the shape of 
a book or the semblance of a manuscript. He laid 
more than thirty great libraries under contribution, and 
was not above purchasing " ships' logs and the pickings 
of chandlers' and grocers' shops." In 1741, he wrote : 
" My agent met with some papers of Archbishop Wake 
at a Chandler's shop ; this is unpardonable in his 
executors, as all his MSS. were left to Christ Church : 
but quaere whether these did not fall into some servant's 
hands, who was ordered to burn them ; and Mr. Martin 
Follets ought to have seen this done." In much the 
same way he acquired the Miscellaneous Papers of 
Samuel Pepys, in twenty-five volumes, which in- 
cluded the list of plays in question, as well as other 
"Treasurer's Accounts." All these were bequeathed 
by him to the Bodleian Library, where they now form 
part of the " Rawlinson MSS." 

^ Evelyn, Diary, May 26, 1703; also Sept. 23, 1700 (ed. Bray, 1879, 
Hi. 165, 154). 
2 G 



IV. ON A POSSIBLE PERFORMANCE 
AT THE BLACKFRIARS, C. 1606. 

THE BLACKFRIARS THEATRE AND 
THE COMPANIES OF BOY ACTORS 



'J^HE TEMPEST, as we learn from Dryden/ was 
brought out with success at the private theatre in 
Blackfriars. There was too much music in the piece to 
make it suitable for the Globe. It was a work of such 
airy and delicate fancy as to require an educated audi- 
ence ; and at the private houses the prices were kept 
high, in order to drive away the Copper Captains and 
Nuns of Alsatia, the sailors, the flat-capped prentices, 
and "youths that thunder at a playhouse and fight for 
bitten apples."^ K fantasia like The Tempest wsiS better 
suited to boys than to grown-up actors ; and to young 
boys, whose voices had not broken, such as the choris- 
ters of St. Paul's, or the children of the Chapel-Royal 
at Whitehall. 

^ Preface to The Tempest ; or, the Eyichanted Islmid (1670), in Works, 
ed. Scott and Saintsbury, iii. 106. Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 309, 
says : " It is not at all improbable that the conspicuous position assigned 
to this comedy in the first folio is a testimony to its popularity." 

2 King Henry VIII,, v. 4, 63-4. 



450 



THE LIBERTY OF BLACKFRIARS 451 



BLACKFRIARS — HISTORY OF THE THEATRE 

There were three of these private theatres in 
London ; the Whitefriars house, constructed in the 
hall of the Carmelites, near the Temple ; ^ the Phoenix, 
or Cockpit, in Drury Lane, built on the site of a dis- 
used cockpit, and bearing the Phoenix on its sign ; ^ 
and the house built by James Burbage in the precinct 
of Blackfriars. This third house we are now about to 
describe. 

The liberty of Blackfriars was a district outside the 
Lord Mayor's jurisdiction, though set within the walls 
of the city. Before the suppression of the monasteries 
it belonged to the Dominican order of friars ; and the 
powers given by charter to the prior were for a long 
time regarded as having passed to his lay successors.^ 
The ancient boundaries are well known, though the 
walls and gateways are gone, and the lines of division 
have been altered by the building of the Blackfriars 
and Ludgate Hill railway stations and the opening of 
Queen Victoria Street above the Embankment. There 
were once four great gates : one was in Carter Lane, 
nearly opposite to Creed Lane ; another opened into 
the old Pilgrims' Way, leading through Pilgrim Street 
and the Broadway into Water Lane by the city wall, 
and as far as the prior's water-gate. The fourth gate- 

^ See notice in Collier, Annals of the stage, ist ed., 1831, iii. 289-95. 
In 1629 a new theatre in Salisbury Court took the place of the old 
Whitefriars theatre, "on or near the site of the old edifice." 

^ Collier, id., 328-32. This theatre does not seem to have existed until 
Shakespeare had left London. 

^ Dug-dale, Monasticon, ed. Caley, Ellis, and Bandinel, 1830, vi. 1487, 
quoting- from Stevens : " Neither the Mayor nor the Sheriffs, nor any 
other Officers of the City of London, had the least jurisdiction or authority 
therein. All which liberties the inhabitants preserved some time after 
the suppression of the Monastery." 



452 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" 

way opened on the timber bridge leading through 
Union Street towards Bridewell, across that ancient 
" river of wells," better known afterwards as the filthy 
ditch of the Fleet. ^ 

If we could carry back our mental vision to the days 
of Henry VIII., we might call up the picture of the 
precinct in its time of magnificence. On the place 
now occupied by the Times office and Printing-house 
Square stood the conventual church, richly furnished 
with hangings and ornaments, and containing, on the 
side near Bridewell, a great hall called the parliament- 
chamber. Here the marriage of Queen Katharine was 
annulled ; '-^ and, sitting in this chamber, the Parlia- 
ment declared the ruin of Wolsey. The cloisters 
stood behind the church, towards Ludgate, their old 
site being indicated by the name of Cloister Court. 
The priory buildings were next to the cloisters ; their 
site was taken at one time for the King's printing- 
house, and is now covered by the Times printing office. 
Just within the precinct and at the back of Carter 
Lane was the little church of St. Anne, Blackfriars, 
where two open spaces still remain to show the site of 
the church and churchyard in the lane now called 
Church Entry. On the city side the friars' quarters 
were bounded by St. Andrew's Hill, leading from 
Carter Lane to Puddle Dock. At the top of the hill 
was the King's wardrobe, a fine building, used as a 
museum of royal costumes, and as a place of custody 
for confidential documents relating to the estates of the 
Crown ; lower down the church of St. Andrew met the 
eastern limit of the precinct. 

King Henry lodged, on his visits to the prior, in a 
fine tower built near the water-gate ; and on one great 
occasion, when Charles V. visited London, a flying 

1 See topography in Stow, Survey of London, ed. Strype, 1720, bk. iii. 
pp. 193-4. 

2 The stage directions in King Henry VIII. , ii. 4, give some sugges- 
tion of the historical surroundings of the scene. 



THE PRIORY IN BLACKFRIARS 453 

bridge was set up from the Emperor's lodging in the 
Blackfriars to the new palace at Bridewell.^ The 
precinct was then a busy place, what with the friars 
and librarians, the prior's justices and their retinue, 
the pilgrims trooping from the "Bell" in Carter Lane 
to Chaucer's hostelry in Southwark "with full devout 
corage." A few years passed ; the priory was sup- 
pressed, and the precinct became as bare as a wilder- 
ness. Part of the house itself was turned into the Pipe 
office, where they kept the great rolls of the Pipe, 
huge sheepskins looking like drain-pipes of the largest 
size. Several houses and gardens were given or sold 
to courtiers, as Sir Thomas Cheyney, a mighty hunter 
of abbey-lands ; Mary Lady Kingston, the dowager, 
and Sir Francis Bryan. ^ In the fourth year of Edward 
VI., the site of the monastery, including the great 
church and what remained of the other buildings, was 
granted to Sir Thomas Cawarden, then Master of the 
Revels. He destroyed the church, and had the assur- 
ance to pull down also St. Anne's parish church, on 
the excuse that it was part of the monastery. The 
priory buildings were divided into chambers, flats, and 
tenements. On Queen Mary's accession, Cawarden 
was ordered to find a church for the parishioners. He 
allowed them the use of a lodging on a first floor, with 
an outside flight of steps ; but the stairs and lodging- 
room having fallen down in 1597, a collection was 
made, and the church was rebuilt with an enlargement, 
and was dedicated in November of that year.^ 

On February 4th, 1596, James Burbage, actor and 
builder, bought a house formerly included in the priory 
from Sir William More, Cawarden's surviving trustee. 
His object was to set up a private theatre, for the 
amusement of a select audience of visitors and licensees, 
and certainly not open to any customer who might 

1 Stow, 2i.s., bk. iii. p. 264. ^ Dug-dale, u.s. 

^ Stow, u.s,, bk. iii. p. 180. 



454 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

come with his penny in hand. The new population 
of the precinct belonged to a quiet race ; they were 
chiefly Puritans, Calvinists, or Huguenots, with shops 
for embroidery, lawns, and cambrics, "confections," 
and dressmaking. They were celebrated for fans and 
feather-work ; and the most popular sign in the liberty 
was the Fool laughing at a Feather. Ben Jonson gibes 
at the poor, hard-working Puritans in his confutation 
of Zeal-of-the-land Busy by "puppet Dionysius." 
"Yea ! what say you to your tire- women then? . . . 
Or feather-makers in the Friars, that are of your faction 
of faith? are not they, with their perukes, and their 
puffs, their fans, and their huffs, as much pages of 
Pride, and waiters upon Vanity? What say you, what 
say you, what say you?" "I will not answer for 
them," replies Zeal-of-the-land. The puppet retorts, 
" Because you cannot, because you cannot. Is a 
bugle-maker a lawful calling? or the confect-makers ? 
such as you have there ; or your French fashioner? You 
would have all the sin within yourselves, would you not, 
would you not?"i When a fine periwig was required, 
people went to the milliners in the Strand ; but Black- 
friars was the place for a hand-glass, an ornamental 
comb, smoky lawn, yellow starch, or crape from Cyprus. ^ 
The shopkeepers of Blackfriars got up a strong 

^ Bartholome'w Fair, act v. sc. 3. Cf. The Alchemist, \. i, where Dol. 
Common abuses Face as an "apocryphal captain, Whom not a Puritan 
in Blackfriars will trust So much as for a feather." Webster's induction 
to The Malcontent contains the words, " This play hath beaten all young 
gallants out of the feathers. Black-friars hath almost spoiled Black- 
friars for feathers." For other references, see Nares' Glossary, ed. 
Halliwell-Phillipps and Wright, s.v. "Black-friars." Randolph's The 
Muses Looking- Glass (printed 1638) has two characters, Bird the feather- 
man, and Mrs. Flowerdew, a haberdasher of smallwares, described as 
"two of the sanctify'd fraternity of Black-friars." Bird (i. i) says: 
"We dwell by Black-friars college, where I wonder How that profane 
nest of pernicious birds Dare roost themselves there in the midst of us, 
So many good and well-disposed persons. O impudence ! " 

^ It was a common saying that Blackfriars was right for a mouse- 
skin eyebrow, but the Strand for a ringlet or a periwig. The word 



BURBAGE'S PURCHASE 455 

petition to the Privy Council in November, 1596, when 
the new house was nearly completed.^ They urged the 
proximity of the theatre to the houses of the nobility 
and gentry ; it was close to Lord Hunsdon's mansion, 
and touched on a house under lease to Lord Cobham.^ 
The crowds coming to the plays might spread disease 
through the district, already too tightly packed, especi- 
ally if the pestilence should return.^ "And besides," 
they said, ". . . the same playhouse is so neere the 
Church that the noyse of the drummes and trumpetts 
will greatly disturbe and hinder both the ministers and 
parishioners in tyme of devine service and sermons." 
In this paragraph they are shown by the date to be 
referring to Cawarden's temporary church, up one pair 
of stairs ; but the theatre was in fact at the lower end of 
a large yard, extending as far as the churchyard and 
the site of the church, as soon afterwards restored. 

The paper was signed by some of the great people 
who owned houses in the precinct. The list was headed 

millmer meant a dealer in articles from Milan ; and, while the Italian 
mode lasted, the Strand shops were full of doublets worked with 
gold thread, gilt-leather gloves called "Milan skins," and Milan silk 
stockings, "twice as strong as ours," said an English traveller, "and 
very massive." Beaumont and Fletcher, Valentinia7i, ii. 2, couple 
"gilded doublets And Milan skins." The commodities of Blackfriars 
were also to be found in that part of the Exchange known as the Pawn, 
"which was richly furnished with all sorts of the finest wares in the 
city," on Queen Elizabeth's memorable visit, Jan. 23, 1570 (Stow, Survey, 
Cornhill Ward). See Sylvester's lines on London, inserted in his translation 
of Du Bartas (week ii., day 2, part 3) : " For costly Toys, silk Stockings, 
Cambrick, Lawn, Here's choice-full Plenty in the curious PAWN." 

^ The petition is printed (from a transcript c. 1631), in Halliwell- 
Phillipps, t(.s., i. 304. 

^ This appears from the deed of feoffment, printed ibid. , 299-304 : 
" All that little yard or peice of void grounde . . . enclosed with the 
same bricke wall and with a pale, next adjoyneinge to the house of the 
said Sir William More, nowe in thoccupacyon of the right honorable 
the Lord Cobham." 

^ " And allso to the greate pestring and filling up of the same precinct, 
yf it should please God to send any visitation of sicknesse as heretofore 
hath been, for that the same precinct is allready growne very 
populous." 



456 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

by Elizabeth, dowager Lady Russell, and Sir George 
Carey, eldest son of Lord Hunsdon, the chamberlain 
of the Household. The Hunsdon family had an ancient 
mansion in the parish, and usually were buried at 
St. Anne's. Within a few weeks Lord Hunsdon died,^ 
and was succeeded by his son George, in his office as 
well as his estates and dignities ; but by that time it 
was too late to object. Among the other names we 
notice William de Lavine,^ Robert Baheire, John Le 
Mere, and Ascanio de Renialmire, all apparently, by 
their names, foreign Protestant refugees, and John 
'' Robbinson," who afterwards became Shakespeare's 
tenant of the dwelling-house occupied by William 
Ireland, right opposite to the King's wardrobe on St. 
Andrew's Hill, and built in part upon a great gateway 
at the entrance to Ireland Yard. 

The dispute went on for about half a century, perhaps 
till the theatre was pulled down. The Lord Mayor 
and the parishioners made repeated complaints about 
the private house; the Lords of the Council as repeatedly 
evaded the question by making regulations only for 
the public theatres. Queen Anne's juvenile company 
played at Blackfriars for some years ; Queen Henrietta 
loved everything that savoured of the stage. Then 
came an ordinance of 1642, prohibiting the acting of 
plays ; ^ and, five years later, another which provided 
for the whipping of contumacious players, and the 
breaking-up of the platforms, boxes, and galleries, and 
whirled away all the rags and properties into the limbo 
of vanity.* 

^ He was buried, not in St. Anne's, Blackfriars, but in Westminster 
Abbey, His immense monument, in St. John Baptist's Chapel, north of 
the apse, was erected by his son. Sir George Carey signs the petition 
"G. Hunsdon." 

^ Also named in the deed of feoffment, u.s., as "William de Lawne, 
Doctor of Physick." 

^ Sept. 2, 1642, printed in Collier, op. cit., ii. 105. 

* Feb. II, 1647-8, printed ibid., pp. 1 14-17, note, from text in Scobell's 
Collection of Acts and Ordiriances. For the history of the ordinance in 



PETITIONS AGAINST THE THEATRE 457 

One of the petitions, on which the Lord Mayor 
founded an order — an order disregarded, as usual — has 
still some interest, as showing the dislike of the shop- 
keepers to carriages. In 163 1, the churchwardens and 
parishioners asked Bishop Laud to remove the players 
from Blackfriars : but his endorsement, "to the council 
Table," indicates that the matter was shelved or laid by. 
By reason of the great resort of coaches, it was urged, 
the shopkeepers' wares were broken and beaten off 
their stalls. This crowd of coaches was so thick that 
the inhabitants could not fetch in afternoon beer, or 
coals, or get water to put out a fire : persons of quality, 
living in Blackfriars, could not get out of their houses : 
ordinary folk were much disturbed at christenings and 
burials, and could not take their walks to Ludgate or 
down to the river. ^ 

II 

CONSTRUCTION OF THE THEATRE — ITS PROBABLE APPEARANCE 
AND SCENIC ARRANGEMENTS 

The conveyance to Burbage, printed by Halliwell- 
Phillipps,^ helps us to realise the look of the old house 
in the priory, converted by him into what is now called 
a "bijou" theatre. It must have been like a Dutch 

question, see ibid., pp. 1 10-19 '■> ^- W. Ward, Eng. Drain. Lit., iii. 278-9. 
See also Collier, u.s., iii. 273-8, on the Blackfriars Theatre. He quotes 
Sir Aston Cokain's "Prseludium" to Richard Brome's plays, 1653: 
" Black, and Whitefriars too, shall flourish again. Though there have 
been none since Queen Mary's reign." " But," he adds, " on the revival 
of the drama, we never hear of its employment, and as it was then an 
old building, it was probably pulled down." Shirley, in a prologue 
printed also in 1653, among his Six Newe Playes, and quoted by Nares, 
U.S., s.v. Black-friars, writes: "But you that can contract yourselves, 
and sit As you were now in the Blacli-Fryers pit." 

^ The petitions are all abstracted in the Cale?idar of State Papers 
(Domestic), ed. Bruce, 1631-3, pp. 219-21 (also see 1633-4, PP- 266-90). 
The petition made in 1631 (no date) was renewed in 1633, "but the 
petitioners obtained no redress" (Collier, op. cit, iii. 277). The petition 
was debated at the Council Table, Oct.-Nov. , 1633. 

^ Vide sup., p. 455, note i. 



458 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

house, of an oblong shape, three-storied, with a high- 
pitched roof and dormer windows. It stood near Water 
Lane, looking into it from the west side of the north 
end : one of the yards was divided from the street only 
by a brick wall.^ On the same side it touched the Pipe 
office, the covered passage leading to the main entrance 
(afterwards the theatre door), and a winding stone stair- 
case open to the air. At other points it touched several 
houses looking on the street — Sir George Carey's man- 
sion. Sir William More's house on the Cawarden 
estate, and another which we have mentioned as being 
under lease from Sir William to Lord Cobham. 

The house having been divided into flats, the descrip- 
tion of the interior was somewhat complicated. The 
general effect was as follows, if we omit such small 
matters as entries, cellars, and coal-holes. The ground- 
floor had been let in four rooms as chambers, a little 
contracted in breadth by the passage along the wall of 
the Pipe office. The first floor^ had been occupied by 
one Rocco Bonnetto. Its dimensions were only 52 x 37 
feet ; and from this we may calculate the size of the 
theatre. The second floor contained seven rooms, 
which, in the days of the friars, had been all in one, 
and two more rooms beyond, with a buttery, certain 
garrets, and a stone staircase leading to the roof. The 
"seaven greate upper romes" were described as lately 
occupied by Dr. William "de Lawne" or Lavine, who 
afterwards joined in the petition against the theatre. 

The amount of alterations required appears by various 
scattered descriptions of the private houses, and by the 
contract, preserved at Dulwich, under which the For- 
tune Theatre was built in 1600.^ We know that plays 

^ "lyeing-e and being- nexte the Queenes highewaye leadinge unto the 
ryver of Thamis." 

2 In the language of the deed, "the Midle Romes or Midle Stories." 
^ Printed in Halliwell Philhpps, u.s., 304-6. CoUier, Annals, iii. 
304-6, gives a good abstract. "This document," notes HalHwell- 
Phillipps, "incidentally reveals to some extent the nature of the con- 
struction of the Globe Theatre." 



CONSTRUCTION OF THE THEATRE 459 

were at first acted in the coachyards of inns. The 
Globe and the Fortune were modified imitations of the 
yards at the Bell or the Belle Sauvage ; and the Red 
Bull, in St. John Street, was nothing more than an inn- 
yard converted into a permanent theatre.^ The stage 
was a platform in the open air, fenced off by strong 
palings from the ground where the crowd found stand- 
ing-room. The lower boxes replaced the rooms looking 
out into the yard : the scaffolding was copied from the 
gallery leading to the bedrooms ; but in a theatre it was 
necessary to cut off portions for '^gentlemen's rooms" 
and *' twopenny rooms" in double tiers. Part of the 
ground tier was taken for a stage-box, which was re- 
placed at some theatres, after a time, by private rooms 
at the back of the stage, close to the music gallery. 

The contracts for building the Globe and the Fortune 
provided that the house should be in a timber frame, 
three stories high, with divisions for the boxes, "a 
stadge and tyreing-howse . . . with a shadowe or cover 
over the said stadge." The stage was to be forty- 
three feet wide, " and in breadth to extend to the middle 
of the yarde," or the pit, as it afterwards was called. 
The platform and the ground-tier boxes were to be 
paled in with ''good stronge and sufficyent newe oken 
bourdes," and "fenced with stronge yron pykes." 

We find no mention of a balcony in the contract for 
building the Fortune ; but we know that there was 
usually such a fabric at the back, over the entrance 

^ See the account in Collier, ti.s., 324-8. Among the literary refer- 
ences which he gives is one to Randolph's The Muse's Lookmg- Glass 
{sup., p. 454, note i), which is of interest in connection with the Puritan 
hostility to the theatres. Mrs. Flowerdew (act i. sc. 2) says : " It was a 
zealous prayer I heard a brother make, concerning playhouses. Bird. 
For charity, what is't? Mrs. F. That the Globe, Wherein (quoth he) 
reigns a whole world of vice. Had been consum'd : the Phoenix burnt to 
ashes : . . . Black-Friars, He wonders how it 'scap'd demolishing F th' 
time of reformation : Lastly, he wished The Bull might cross the Thames 
to the Bear-garden, And there be soundly baited. Bird. A good prayer." 
(Dodsley, Old Plays, 1825, vol. ix.) 



46o PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

from the dressing-rooms. Juliet's balcony is proof 
enough for the Globe ; Marston's Fawn climbs a tree 
and is received "above" by Dulcimel ;^ and the Queen 
of Cyprus in The Dumb Knight^ by Lewis Machin 
and Gervase Markham, plays Mount-saint, or Piquet, 
"aloft" with Philocles, while the King, disguised as 
one of the guard, watches them from the side of the 
stage. ^ In the private houses the balcony was freely 
used. In The Tempest^ Prospero stood there invisible, 
when the lovers met in the yard. He must have 
mounted the upper stage while they talked ; when they 
departed, he came forward and spoke down to the 
audience.^ And again, in the scene with the three 
villains, when the trumpery from the house is brought 
"for stale to catch these thieves," we must suppose 
that, while Caliban and his friends groped about near 
the entrance and the curtain that was supposed to hide 
the cell, Prospero and Ariel ensconced themselves un- 
seen in the fabric above.* 

The principal entrance must have been under the 
balcony. It was generally covered by a large curtain ; 
but, if that were "knocked up,"^ the opening would 
serve to show the interior of a room or a cavern. In 
The Tempest there is a famous example. "This cell's 
my court," says Prospero — 

" here have I few attendants 
And subjects none abroad : pray you, look in." 

He lifts the tapestry, and so "discovers" Ferdinand 
playing at chess with Miranda.*^ On each side of the 
entrance and along one breadth of the platform there 
were rods and rings for side-curtains, where the actors 
took unseen parts, or sang, or made a "confused 

^ Act V. sc. I, in Bullen's ed. of Marston, 1885, etc., vol. ii. p. 210. 
^ Act iv. sc. I in Dodsley, u.s., vol. iv. 
"* Tempest, iii. i. ■* Id,, iv. i. 

^ Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, act v. (Dodsley, u.s., vol. iii.) ; *' Enter 
Hieronimo, he knocks up the curtain." ^ Tempest, v. i. 



ARRANGEMENT OF THEATRE 461 

noise," as might be required ; and, on occasion, a 
screen, or "traverse," was set near the tapestry, so that 
a speech might be given without the figure being seen. 
We have some hint of this in The Tempest. Antonio, 
his brother's substitute, persuaded himself that he was 
the actual Duke, ''out of the substitution," and as 
wearing the face royal by prerogative right. Says 
Prospero : 

*' To have no screen between this part he played 

And him he played it for, he needs will be 

Absolute Milan. "1 

There was no scenery in the modern sense of the 
term. 2 "Before the Wars," says the Cavalier in 
Wright's i^z^/on^^ j^2>zfnbwzc« (about 1699), "... tho' 
the town was not much more than half so populous as 
now, yet then the prices were small (there being no 
scenes)."^ Davenant brought the fashion from France 
when acting was still forbidden, and gave The Siege of 
Rhodes, Sir Francis Drake, and other recitations and 
private theatricals, "made a presentation by the Art 
of Prospective in Scenes, and the Story sung in Recita- 
tive Musick."* After the Restoration he began again 
to use scenery at the Duke of York's house in Portugal 
Row,^ and the King's Players followed suit, when, in 
1663, they moved from the Tennis Court by Clare 
Market to Drury Lane. The accounts of the Lord 

^ Id,, i. 2, 107-9. 

^ In The Spanish Tragedy, u.s., we have a passage illustrating' the 
primitive character of contemporary " scenery." "Well done, Balthazar, 
hang up the title : Our scene is Rhodes." The passage in Sidney's 
Apologie for Poetrie is familiar : "What childe is there, that coming to a 
play and seeing Thebes written in great letters upon an old door, doth 
believ that it is Thebes?" ^ In Dodsley, u.s., vol. i. p. cxlviii. 

* Title-page of The Siege of Rhodes, 1656, in Dramatic Works of Sir 
W. D'Avettant, Edinburgh, 1873, ^°^' •'•• P- ^3^- ^■^^ Siege of Rhodes 
(1656) was produced at Rutland House in Aldersgate Street; The Cruelty 
of the Spaniards in Peru (1658) and The History of Sir Francis Drake 
(1659), at the Cockpit in Drury Lane. See A. W. Ward, op. cit., iii. 
280-5. 

^ The Portugal Row theatre was opened in 1661, closed in 1673. 



462 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

Admiral's company, among the Henslowe MSS. at 
Dulwich, show that the actors used properties almost 
fit to be classed among ''scenes," such as a "hell's 
mouth," after Orcagna's style, a city of Rome, castles 
and villages, the tomb of Dido, "pageants" in wood- 
work and canvas, and "a cloth of the Sun and Moon," 
which, in Boswell's opinion, was "the Ne plus ultra'''' 
of those days. It is very possible that a rude mast 
and tackling were used in The Tempest y when the play 
opened on a ship at sea. The cabins were behind the 
side-hangings ; the master would naturally mount the 
balcony. "Where is the master, boatswain?" asks 
Antonio. "Do you not hear him?" is the answer. 
"You mar our labour: keep your cabins: you do 
assist the storm. "^ 

The stage-covering, or "shadow," in the public 
theatres was sometimes known as the "heavens." 
Malone inferred, from Heywood's words in the Apology 
for Actors, that this was painted a sky-colour or welkin 
blue.^ But the phrase may have been a mere copy of 
the Italian cielo; and in a tragedy, we know, by 
familiar examples, that "the heavens " were hung with 
black.^ A private theatre had a proper ceiling instead 
of a painted canvas ; but there was nothing to prevent 
the use of "property" clouds and draperies. This 
would suit Trinculo's storm, which sang in the wind, 
while a cloud arose like a black-jack full of muddy beer. 

" Yond same black cloud, yond huge one, looks like a foul 
bombard that would shed his liquor. If it should thunder 
as it did before, I know not where to hide my head : 
yond same cloud cannot choose but fall by pailfuls." ^ 

The bombards at the court buttery were the huge 
pails in which the maids and pages received their 

^ Tempest, i. i, 12-14. ^ Malone's Shakespeare, ed. Boswell, iii. 108. 

^ I Henry VI., i. i. So Northward Ho, iv. i : "As I was saying, the 
stage all hung with black velvet," where the reference is to Chapman's 
Conspiracy of Byron. •* Tempest, ii. 2, 20-5. 



SCENERY AND STAGE-COVERING 463 

'* broken beer."'^ The bombard in The Tempest is 
the shadow of a cloud on the ceiling, or a drapery 
with a similar effect, in shape like the stumpy cannon 
that were used as pieces for bombardment, or like a 
magnified *' leather bottel," or a huge boot, or the 
largest of the shiny pails which slopped the floor near 
the butler's hatch. ^ 



III 

CHARACTERISTICS OF PRIVATE THEATRES — SITTING ON THE 
STAGE — THE INDUCTION TO JONSON's "CYNTHIA'S REVELS " 

The differences between a private theatre and a 
common playhouse may be classified as follows.^ The 
prices at the former were high, but the standard of 
comfort was totally different. The roof was covered in 
with a ceiling ; the windows were glazed ; and there 
were comfortable, though narrow, seats throughout the 
pit and the galleries. The stage was small ; for even 

^ The daily allowance of meat and drink was called " bouge {i.e. Fr. 
bouche) of court." So Jonson, Masque of Augurs, acted at court on 
Twelfth-Night, 1621-2 ; Groom . , . I am an officer, groom of the revels, 
that is my place. Notch, To fetch bouge of court, a parcel of invisible 
bread and beer for the players." In Skelton's allegorical poem of this 
name, Bouge of Courte is the name of the ship of Fortune. In Jonson's 
masque of Mercury Vindicated fro7n the Alchemists, acted at court 1614, 
Mercury describes a bargain he has concluded with the alchemists : 
"One day I am to deliver the buttery in, so many firkins of atiium 
potahile as it delivers out bombards of houge to them between this and 
that." 

^ In another passage of Shakespeare {Henry VIII., v. 4, 82-6), a 
"jack" of this kind is compared to the uncouth form of a bear tied to 
the post, and attacked by thirsty enemies on all sides at once. The Lord 
Chamberlain rebukes the noisy servants in the palace-yard. "Ye are 
lazy knaves ; And here ye lie baiting of bombards, when Ye should do 
service." John Taylor, the water-poet, in the argument of Farewel, to 
the Tower Bottles, Dort, 1622, relates the history of the gift of " two 
black Leather Bottles, or Bombards of wine," granted to the Tower 
" from every ship that brought wine into the river of Thames." 

^ Collier, op. cit., iii, 335-40. In addition to those tabulated here, we 
learn that "the boxes or rooms at private theatres were enclosed and 
locked, and the key given to the individual engaging them." 



464 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

the forty-three foot platform at the Fortune was called 
"vast" in comparison with the boards at Blackfriars. 
The house was lighted with chandeliers and wax 
candles ; but where the yard was open to the weather, 
as at the Globe or Fortune, they could use only 
branched candlesticks on the stage, with "cressets" or 
cages for tarred ropes' ends to flare in front of the 
boxes. The plays in the private houses were acted 
usually by boys, some of whom belonged to the choir 
of St. Paul's ; others, the Queen's Children of the 
Revels, belonged to the Chapel Royal. This led to 
the "throwing about of brains" in the quarrel rebuked 
by Hamlet. 1 The poets, for their own purposes, stirred 
up the "aery of children" to " berattle the common 
stages," and so draw the public to Blackfriars or the 
singing-room of Paul's. These "little eyases" de- 
clined to follow the actors' reading, or " cry in the top 
of" their argument. The judgment of Hamlet's friends 
had cried in the top of his own, when he praised a play 
that displeased the million ; but these boys went quite 
beyond the proper limits of discussion: "they cry out 
on the top of question, and are most tyrannically 
clapped for't." 

1 Hamlet, ii. 2. About 1599 or 1600 (see Fleay, Biog. Chron. Eng. 
Drama, 1891, ii, 30, 78) the boys of Blackfriars most audaciously invaded 
the acting rights of the Globe company by performing Kyd's famous 
Spanish Tragedy. The King's company, in 1604, annexed Marston's 
Malcontent, a stock piece at Blackfriars, which probably had been pro- 
duced about 1601 (see A. W. Ward, op. cit., ii. 483; iii. 52). Two 
editions of the play were printed in 1604 ; the second is prefaced by 
Webster's comical induction, "Why not," says Burbage to Sly on his 
three-legged stool, "why not Malevole in folio with us as well as 
Jeronimo in decimo sexto with them? They taught us a name for our 
play, we call it. One for another." Burbage, Sly, Condell, Lowin, and 
Sinklow took various parts in the induction ; but it is clear that Shake- 
speare himself was not playing at the time. There are respectful 
references to his works, as when Sly quotes from Osric's part in Hatnlet, 
V. 2, 109, refusing to put on his hat with " No, in good faith for mine 
ease," and again, when he offers to compose an ending, and, with a bow 
and a scrape, throws off a passable imitation of the epilogue to As You 
Like It. 



THE PRIVATE THEATRES 465 

The custom of sitting on the stage, either on stools or 
among the rushes on the floor, prevailed in all the 
private houses among the visitors : we may perhaps 
regard the row of stools by the arras as a rough equiva- 
lent for our modern stalls.^ The town-fops smoked and 
cracked nuts on the platform, and sometimes slapped 
down their cards in a game, just as the third trumpet 
was sounding, and the Prologue stood quaking in his 
black velvet cloak at the entrance.^ The excuse was 
made that it was necessary to judge of the acting very 
closely, as appears by the preface to the first folio of 
Shakespeare's plays. "Censure," wrote the editors, 
"will not drive a trade or make the jacke go. And 
though you be a magistrate of wit, and sit on the stage 
of Black-Friers or the Cock-pit to arraigne playes dailie, 
know, these playes have had their triall alreadie, and 
stood out all appeales." A gallant sometimes would 



^ Allusions to this custom are innumerable. Ben Jonson, The Devil 
is an Ass (acted by the King's men at Blackfriars, 1616), i. 3, has a 
passage to the point. Fitzdottrel has a new cloak, to be seen in which 
he purposes to " go to the Blackfriars playhouse" ; self-display, he tells 
his wife, is " a special end why we go thither, All that pretend to stand 
fort on the stage." Collier, op. cit., iii. 339, quotes] Francis Lenton's 
Young Gallant's Whirligig, 1629 : " The Cockpit heretofore would serve 
his wit. But now iipon the Friars stage he'll sit." The epilogue to 
Chapman's All Fools, a Blackfriars play, contains an allusion to the 
critics and their tripods: "We can but bring you meat, and set you 
stools " ; and, in the prologue, the self-appointed judges are prayed not 
to spoil the performance by leaving their places too soon : " If our other 
audience see You on the stage depart before we end ; Our wits go with 
you all, and we are fools." 

^ Prologue to Heywood's Four Prentices of London (in Dodsley, u.s., 
vol. vi.). Three rival prologues meet at the entrance ; the first ex- 
postulates : "What mean you, my masters, to appear thus before your 
times ? Do you not know that I am the Prologue ? Do you not see 
this long black velvet cloak upon my back? Have you not sounded 
thrice ? Do I not look pale as fearing to be out in my speech ? Nay 
have I not all the signs of a Prologue about me?" In the prolog'ue to 
Fletcher's Wo7nan-Hater, acted by the children of Paul's probably 
about Easter, 1607, we read: "Gentlemen, inductions are out of date; 
and a Prologue in verse is as stale as a black velvet cloak and a bay 
garland." 

2 H 



466 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

propose to sit on the stage at one of the larger theatres; 
but he would generally be turned off amid a shower of 
bitten apples, with yells and catcalls and shouts of 
*' Away with the fool ! " In the induction to The Mal- 
co7itent, William Sly, the actor, disguised as a fop, 
mounts the platform at the Globe, and asks one of the 
dressers for a three-legged stool. "Sir," is the answer, 
*'the gentlemen will be angry if you sit here." Sly 
retorts: "Why we may sit upon the stage at the 
private house. Thou do'st not take me for a country 
gentleman, do'st? do'st thou fear hissing? " 

Ben Jonson brought out in the year 1600 his Cynthia's 
Revels, which was acted by the children of the Chapel, 
at Blackfriars. Before the play opened, the author sent 
on three of the boys for an induction, in which the 
practice of smoking on the stage was satirised. The 
chief parts were taken by Nathaniel Field, the Mercury 
of the play, John Underwood, who seems to have been 
the traveller Amorphus, and probably by Salathiel Pavy, 
who played Cupid. John Underwood is addressed as 
" Resolute Jack" by way of an allusion to " resolute " 
John Florio. Field, who appears as "number three," 
gives an imitation of a genteel auditor with clay 
pipe alight : "I have my three sorts of tobacco in my 
pocket, my light by me, and thus I begin." Mixtures not 
being invented, he must bring three kinds in his pouch, 
"cane, pudding, and right Trinidado,"and was lucky if 
his herb were not mostly yellow henbane, or a quarter of 
a pound of colt's-foot to every half-pound that had crossed 
the Atlantic. He smokes and puffs between his sen- 
tences. " By this light, I wonder that any man is so 

mad, to come to see these rascally tits play here. 

They do act like so many wrens or pismires not the 

fifth part of a good face amongst them all. And then 

their music is abominable able to stretch a man's 

ears worse than ten pillories, and their ditties 

most lamentable things, like the pitiful fellows that make 



"CYNTHIA'S REVELS" 467 

them poets." The object of these precocious child- 
players is far from that of ''berattling the common 
stages " as " little eyases." Field was only thirteen at 
this time ; the others younger : yet, later in the same 
play, these words are made to describe their aim and 
ambition. " Since we are turn'd cracks," says Mercury 
to Cupid, "let's study to be like cracks ; practise their 
language and behaviours, and not with a dead imitation : 
Act freely, carelessly, and capriciously, as if our veins 
ran with quicksilver, and not utter a phrase, but what 
shall come forth steep'd in the very brine of conceit, 
and sparkle like salt in fire." ^ 

In the next "turn," Jack Underwood is lounging 
about, dressed ready to come on, and Field is a sober 
"garter-gathered" squire, unused to the ways of the 
town. Underwood steps forth ' ' like one of the children. " 
" Would you have a stool, sir ? " "A stool, boy!" "Ay, 
sir, if you'll give me sixpence I'll fetch you one." " For 
what, I pray thee? what shall I do with it?" "O Lord, 
sir ! will you betray your ignorance so much ? why, 
throne yourself in state on the stage, as other gentlemen 
use, sir." The next answer is full of information about 
the stage decorations. "Away, wag; what, would'st 
thou make an implement of me ? 'Slid, the boy takes 
me for a piece of perspective, I hold my life, or some 
silk curtain, come to hang the stage here ! Sir crack, 
I am none of your fresh pictures, that use to beautify 
the decayed dead arras in a public theatre." 

Underwood next gives a sketch in which Jonson 
himself is contrasted with the ordinary playwright at 
rehearsal, the officious poet who is always in the tiring- 
house. He begs the visitor to leave the stage, as the 
play is about to begin. ' ' Most willingly, my good wag ; 

^ Cynthia's Revels, ii. i. For the use of "crack" (defined in Nares' 
Glossary as "a boy . . . that cracks or boasts) cf. 2 Henry IV., iii, 2, 
32-4, " I saw him break Skogan's head at the court-gate, when a' was 
a crack not thus high." 



468 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" 

but I would speak with your author : where is he ? " 
"Not this way, I assure you, sir; we are not so 
officiously befriended by him, as to have his presence 
in the tiring-house, to prompt us aloud, stamp at the 
book-holder, swear for our properties, curse the poor 
tireman, rail the music out of tune, and sweat for 
every venial trespass we commit. ... If you please to 
confer with our author, by attorney you may, sir ; our 
proper self here, stands for him." The visitor rails at 
the authors who stuff their plays with stories out of old 
books, or from the mouths of laundresses and hackney 
men, or the common stages. Towards the end he gives 
his interlocutor a warning. " O, (I had almost forgot 
it too,) they say the umbrce or ghosts of some three or 
four plays departed a dozen years since, have been seen 
walking on your stage here ; take heed, boy, if your 
house be haunted with such hobgoblins, 'twill fright 
away all your spectators quickly." "Good, sir; but 
what will you say now, if a poet, untouched with any 
breath of this disease, find the tokens upon you, that 
are of the auditory?" This is an allusion to the pesti- 
lence of 1593, to which Shakespeare had alluded in 
Lovers Labour'' s Lost.^ 

^ Loves Labour s Lost, v. 2, 418-23. 

" Soft, let us see : 

Write ' Lord have mercy on us ' on those three ; 

They are infected, in their hearts it lies ; 

They have the plague, and caught it of your eyes ; 

These lords are visited ; you are not free, 

For the Lord's tokens on you do I see." 
There is not enough in Jonson's allusion to show that he was thinking of 
Shakespeare. All that he actually says is that a poet, v^'ith no tokens of 
staleness about him, might find ghosts enovigh among the audience, who 
talked of twenty years since, and the fashions "when Monsieur was 
here," or swore "that the old Hieronimo, as it was first penned, was the 
only best and judiciously penned play of Europe." 

Allusions to the "tokens" of pestilence in Shakespeare are not un- 
common after the great outbreak of plague in the winter of 1602, which, 
between Christmas and Christmas, killed in London and its liberties 
more than 30,000 people. The tokens were redder than in former pesti- 
lences : hard spots of a bright flaming red were accounted a fatal 



THE CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL 469 



IV 

THE CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL — NATHANIEL FIELD — THE PART 
OF ARIEL IN "the TEMPEST " 

From its opening in 1597 till the spring of 1603 the 
Blackfriars theatre was served by the "Children of 
the Chapel," or, in other words, by the choristers of the 
Chapel Royal at Whitehall. They were under the orders 
of Dr. Nathaniel Giles, Master in Song,^ and after- 
wards organist, and they received instructions in acting 
from Mr. Henry Evans, the lessee and manager. Dr. 

symptom. When Cleopatra spread her sails in flight, the battle, says the 
Roman, looked "like the tokened pestilence, where death is sure (AnL 
and Cleopatra, iii. lo, 9-10). Volumnia {Coriolanus, iv. i, 13) called down 
the "red pestilence" on "all the trades in Rome." Caliban's curse 
{Tempest, i. 2, 363) was "the red plague rid you," or, as Davenant 
altered the reading, the "red botch." The writer possessed a receipt- 
book written out in 1627 by " Elizabeth Bulkley," showing how the red 
plague required red medicine— ivy berries, red sage, and red bramble 
leaves. Hartman, in his Preserve}' of Health, 1682, pp. 69, 75, 12S-30, gives 
numerous receipts of a similar kind for plague-waters and cordials ; and 
Dr. Creighton tells us, in his History of Epidemics (i. 676), that the 
nurses in the last plague used to say that "cochineal is a fine thing 
to bring out the tokens. " 

The end of the induction to Cynthia's Revels contains a phrase which 
illustrates All's Well that Ends Well, iv. i, 22 : "chough's language, 
gabble enough, and good enough." "Here, take your cloak," says 
Field to Pavy, "and promise some satisfaction in your prologue, or, 
I'll be sworn we have marr'd all." "Tut, fear not, child," adds Under- 
wood, "this will never distaste a true sense: be not out, and good 
enough." 

1 The history of the Children of the Chapel was traced by Dr. Rim- 
bault In the edition of the Old Cheque-book, or Book of Remembrance, 
of the Chapel Royal from 1561 to 1744, printed for the Camden Society 
in 1882. His list of "Masters of the Song" begins with Henry Abingdon 
and Gilbert Banister, mentioned in acts of resumption of the 13th and 
22nd Ed. iv. Under William Cornish, who followed Banister, the gentle- 
men of the Chapel acted before the King, and received rewards as 
players of the Chapel: "When the Children took part in a dramatic 
performance under Cornish, they received a gratuity of ^6. 13. 4." (pp. 
iv., v.). This was the equivalent of ten marks or twenty nobles in 
the old money of account, the mark being taken at 135. ^d. and the 
noble at 65. Sd, 



470 PRODUCTION OF '^THE TEMPEST" 

Giles was deputed to exercise the prerogative right 
of impressing boys with good voices for service in the 
Chapel Royal and for taking part in entertainments at 
Court. The custom of pressing boys for service in the 
choir existed as far back as the time of Richard III., 
and probably grew out of a still older claim to enrol 
minstrels for the King's service. It was part of the 
children's duty to act plays at Court, and it became 
the practice to train them at one of the smaller theatres. 
The choristers of St. Paul's were taught in their own 
singing-room, behind the convocation-house and near 
the library, until the cathedral was burned. Out of the 
eight Chapel Royal choristers it was usual to send six 
at one time to be trained at Blackfriars ; but an order 
was made in 1626, while Dr. Giles was still master, 
to pacify the Puritans, ''that none of the Choristers or 
Children of the Chappell, soe to be taken by force 
of this Commission, shalbe used or imployed as Come- 
dians or Stage players, or to exercise or acte any Stage 
plaies, interludes. Comedies or Tragedies."^ Besides 
their singing and acting, the choristers were obliged to 
attend classes in their grammar school. When their 
time was out, two of them had a claim to be appointed 
"epistlers," or readers of the epistle, and to take rank 
among the yeomen of the Chapel. If any of the 
children reached eighteen years of age, and his voice 
was changed, then, in case there were no vacancy in 
the Chapel, the King would send him to a college 
of his foundation at Oxford or Cambridge, "there to 
be at fynding and studye both suffytyently, tylle the 
King may otherwise advaunse them." ^ While engaged 
as choristers, they were expected to lodge and take 
their meals at Whitehall ; and the royal accounts show 
that they had daily among them "two loaves, one 

1 Printed in Collier, op. cit., ii. i6 ; Rimbault, u.s., pp. viii. , ix. The 
stag-e-plays are reckoned in this document among "lascivious and pro- 
phane exercises. " '^ Rimbault, u.s., ■p. iv. 



BOY COMEDIANS 471 

messe of greate meate, ij galones of ale," with the 
addition, in the winter season, of four candles of pitch, 
three faggots of cleft wood, and litter for their pallets.^ 

We already have referred to the children who took 
the chief parts in the performance of Cynthia's Revels. 
''This comical satire," we read in Jonson's description 
of the cast, "was first acted in the year 1600 by the 
then children of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel ; the principal 
comedians were Nat Field, John Underwood, Sal Pavy, 
Robert Baxter, Thomas Day, and John Frost." Baxter 
and Frost were replaced by William Ostler and Thomas 
Marton, a junior chorister, before The Poetaster was 
brought out in the next season. Pavy acted in the last- 
named play, but died early in 1603, at the age of 
thirteen, having acted for three years at the Blackfriars, 
chiefly in old men's characters. So much we gather 
from Jonson's well-known epitaph on "S.P. a child 
of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel."^ 

Underwood probably left the house at Blackfriars 
and the company of children who then acted in it 
about 1608, when, as we shall see, they had to leave the 
theatre. His name is not in the list of Children of the 
Revels who acted Jonson's Silent Woman at White- 
friars in that year; and the cast of The Alchemist in 
1610 shows that he had joined the King's players at 
the Globe. About the same time he acquired shares 
and interests in the Globe itself, in the Blackfriars 
house, and in the Curtain Theatre at Shoreditch. By 
his will in 1624 he disposed of these shares on trusts 
in favour of his children, describing them as "the 
part or share, that I have and enjoy at this present by 
lease or otherwise . . . within the Blackfriars, London, 
or in the company of His Majesty's servants, my loving 
and kind fellows, in their house there, or at the Globe, 
on the Bankside ; and also that my part and share or 

^ Rimbault, id., p. iii. The word used for "fag-gots of cleft wood" is 
"talsheids." '^ Jonson, Epigrams^ cxx. 



472 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

due in or out of the playhouse called the Curtaine, 
situate in or near Holloway, in the parish of St. Leonard, 
London."^ 

William Ostler's name appears among the principal 
comedians in The Alchemist^ described by Jonson as 
"first acted in 1610 by the King's Majesty's Servants," 
He was called the " Roscius of these times" and ''the 
King of actors " in a short poem by John Davies, the 
schoolmaster of Hereford.^ It was admitted on all 
hands that Burbage came first ; but, among the 
younger men, Ostler and Field were perhaps the best 
pair of actors in England.^ Both Field and Ostler 
appear in the first folio among the principal actors in 
Shakespeare's plays. Ostler had left the stage, or was 
dead, before the volume appeared. Field was among 
those who signed the actors' prefatory address ; and it 
is conjectured that he had then been a member of the 
company for about four years. Mr. Payne Collier 
points out that he was engaged at Paris Garden for 
some time after 1614, and that his name does not 
occur before 1619 in any extant patent. As we have 
seen, he was a chorister of the Chapel Royal ; but, 
about 1606, we find him taking the leading part in 
Biissy d'Ambois, presented by the Children of Paul's.* 

1 Printed by Collier, Memoirs of the Principal Actors in the Plays of 
Shakespeare, 1846, pp. 229-30, 

^ Collier, id. 202-3 > Davies, Scourge of Folly, ep. 205. 

^ The celebrity of Field is, at any rate, beyond any question. There 
was a puppet-show in Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, v. 3, kept by one 
Lanthorn Leatherhead, the "master of the monsters," identified by Fleay 
{Chronicle of English Drama, 1891, i. 378) and others with Inigo Jones — 
a doubtful, but plausible conjecture. Leatherhead is asked a question 
about his " small players." " Which is your Burbage now ? " "What 
mean you by that, sir?" "Your best actor, your Field?" 

* The date of performance of Chapman's drama is uncertain. Fleay, 
U.S., i. 60, inclines to 1605. It may have been performed much earlier, 
since Tucca in Satiromastix , i6oi (Dekker's Dram. Works, 1873, i. 230), 
quotes a line from the tragedy, as if it were well known : " Go not out 
farthing candle, go not out. For trusty Damboys now the deed is done." 
The tragedy was one of the stock plays of the Children of Paul's. The 



NATHANIEL FIELD 473 

As he was certainly not a chorister in the cathedral, we 
must suppose that he was just then free of engagements, 
or lent for the occasion by his manager. He soon 
returned to Blackfriars, where he acted among the 
Queen's Children of the Revels, and afterwards as a 
grown-up actor, when the King's Company took over 
the house in addition to the Globe. This may explain 
a disputed passage in Wright's Historia Histrionica of 
1699. ''Some of those Chapel boys, when they grew 
men, became actors at the Black-friers, such were 
Nathan. Field, and John Underwood."^ Field became 
a dramatist of some note. Gerard Langbaine gave him 
a kindly notice in his gossiping account of the dramatic 
poets.2 "Not only a Lover of the Muses, but belov'd 
by them, and the Poets his Contemporaries. He was 
adopted by Mr. Chapman for his Son {i.e. in literature), 
and call'd in by Old Massinger to his Assistance, in the 
play call'd The Fatal Dowry. '' ^ Field, he added, "writ 
himself two plays which will still bear reading." The 
first of these was written in Field's youth ; it was called 
A Woma7i is a Weathercock, and was brought out at 
the private house in Whitefriars in or before 1610. 
Very soon afterwards he produced another comedy, 
intended as an apology for the first, and entitled 
Amends for Ladies. To this title, in 1639, were added 
the words, "with the merry pranks of Moll Cutpurse, 
or the Humour of Roaring."* 

prologue to the edition of 1641, in which a new supporter of the \SS\&-r6le 
is introduced, contains the lines " Field is gone, Whose action first did 
give it name." The new actor is supposed by some to be Sv/anston, 
one of the petitioners in the lawsuit {vide infra), against the proprietors 
of the Globe Theatre, 1635. See W. L. Phelps, Best Plays of George 
Chapman, 1895, p. 125, note. ^ Printed in Dodsley, u.s., p. clvi. 

'•^ Langbaine, Account of English Dramatick Poets, i(i<)i, p. 198. 

^ Fleay, u.s., i. 208, gives the date of performance of The Fatal 
Dowry as " 1619, about Shrovetide." It was published in 1632. One 
passage, ii. 2, was transferred by Field from Amends for Ladies. 

•* A. W. Ward, op. cit., iii. 49, assumes, from internal evidence, the 
date of composition of both plays to be 1610, of their production 1610 or 
161 1. See Fleay, u.s., i. 185, 201-2. Mr. A. W. Verity, in his preface to 



474 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

There are some faint indications that Nathaniel Field 
may have acted Ariel in The Te^npest. Mr. Payne 
Collier^ quoted an epigram on "Fuscus" from The 
Furies of Richard Nichols (1614). Fuscus had left his 
business for the stage "in hopes to outact Roscius in 
a scene." 

" Players do now as plentifully grow 
As spawn of frogs in March ; yet evermore 
The great devour the less. Be wise, therefore ; 
Procure thou some commendatory letter 
For the Burmoothe's — 'tis a course far better." 

As we know from the history of the Summer Islands 
that the colonists were then at the extremity of their 
misery, it is clear that the advice was merely sarcastic. 
Mr. Collier thought that this "Roscius" must have 
been Burbage ; but at that date the title might as easily 
have been given to Field. The mention of the " Bur- 
moothes " instinctively recalls Ariel's words in The 
Tempest^ where he speaks of the creek : 

" Where once 

Thou call'dst me up at midnight to fetch dew 

From the still-vex'd Bermoothes."^ 

The same biographer quotes an epigram from the 
Ashmolean Library, copied into many commonplace 
books of the seventeenth century, which was jocosely 
ascribed to Field. It was headed, "Field, the Player, 
on his mistress, the Lady May," and began : 

" It is the fair and merry month of May, 
That clothes the Field in all his rich array. "^ 

The zephyrs are invoked for a cool breeze, and the 
clouds so kind are prayed to " distil their honey drops." 

the plays in the "Mermaid" edition (1888) assigns the production of the 
first to 1609, of the second to 1612. In 1609-10 Field would have been 
twenty-two years old : he was baptised at St. Giles without Cripplegate, 
Oct. 17, 1587. 

■* Collier, Memoirs of Actors, p. 40, note 2. - Tempest, i. 2, 227-9, 

' The epigram will be found on p. 217 of Collier's Memoirs of Principal 
Actors, 



FIELD AS A POSSIBLE ARIEL 475 

This, of course, was Ariel's phrase when he presented 
Queen Ceres in the masque. Phaer, in his translation 
of Virgil, had spoken of "Dame Rainbow with saffron 
wings of dropping showers " ; but Shakespeare seems 
to have altered the phrase to the more delicate form : 

'* Who with thy saffron wings upon my flowers 
Diffusest honey-drops." ^ 

These coincidences of phrase may suggest a reference 
to Field's assumption of the part of Ariel, but are too 
slight to be in any sense conclusive. 



V 

THE CHILDREN OF THE QUEEN'S REVELS AT BLACKFRIARS 

There is no evidence that the Children of the Chapel 
acted at Blackfriars after Queen Elizabeth's death on 
the 24th of March, 1603. It is clear, at all events, that 
their connection with that theatre ceased at the end of 
the year. Queen Anne wished for a juvenile company 
of her own ; and on the 30th January, 1604, a licence 
was granted to Edward Kirkham and his three partners 
to procure and train boys in a company to be called 
"The Children of the Revels to the Queen," and to 
exercise them in playing at the theatre of Blackfriars 
and elsewhere.^ The children were to be engaged by 
contract, as the Queen could not exercise the preroga- 
tive of impressment. About the same time it was pro- 
vided that every play should be submitted to Mr. 
Samuel Daniel, Groom of the Chambers to the Queen, 
and by a fresh appointment Master of Her Majesty's 
Children of the Revels. Daniel was not an official 
court-poet ; but he was universally respected as a poet 
and historian, and, in the popular estimation, without 

^ Tempest^ iv, i, 78-9. ^ Printed in Collier, Anjials^ i. 353. 



476 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" 

any salary or butt of sack, he took rank after Spenser 
*'as the best of the laureates."^ He entered on his 
duty without a moment's delay ; for, according to the 
treasurer's accounts among the Rawlinson MSS. in the 
Bodleian Library, the council of the 24th of February, 
1605, issued a warrant for the payment of twenty marks, 
" and by way of his Highnesses reward 20 nobles ; in 
all the sum of ^20," to Samuel Daniel and Henry 
Evans for a play performed before the King on New 
Year's Day, and for another performed two evenings 
later by the "Queen's Majesties Children of the 
Revels." 

We have no list of the Queen's company at Black- 
friars. It is conjectured that Nat. Field was retained ; 
but Ostler, Day, and Underwood migrated in course of 
time to the Globe — Underwood, as we have seen, in 
or before 1609. The boys still serving in the choir 
of the Chapel Royal were debarred from attendance. 
Mr. G. Chalmers, in his Farther Account of the Early 
English Stage, was positive that Field became a mem- 
ber of the Revels company when he left the chapel,^ 
and when that company was formed, he was in his 
seventeenth year. It is also reasonable to suppose that 
William Barkstead belonged to the same house. We 
first hear of him in 1609, as an actor in Jonson's Silent 
Woman at Whitefriars, after the Blackfriars Theatre 
had been taken over by the King's men, and some of 
the children had been dismissed from the Queen's first 
company. Field and Barkstead took the leading parts. 
Field, then about twenty-two years old, probably play- 

^ His " laureateship " was, as Malone first suggested, an informal 
office. Alexander Chalmers, in the life prefixed to his edition of Daniel 
in The Works of the English Poets, vol. iii., quotes an epigram by 
Charles FitzGeffrey (i575?-i638), the author of Drake (1596), beginning 
" Spenserum si quis nostrum velit esse Maronem, Tu, Daniele, mihi Naso 
Britannus eris." Fuller bears testimony to his twofold excellence as an 
" exquisite poet . . . also a judicious historian." 

'^ Chalmers, in Boswell's Malone, iii. 510. 



CHILDREN OF THE QUEEN'S REVELS 477 

ing the title character of Epicoene, the Silent Woman. 
Barkstead, called "a young gentleman almost of age," 
must have been nearly two years younger, though he 
had published his poem of Mirrha in 1607.^ He 
worked with Lewis Machin, some of whose eclogues 
were appended to the poem. Four years afterwards 
Barkstead brought out another poem on the popular 
subject of Irene — Hiren ; or, the Faire Greeke. He has 
been credited with at least a share in The Insatiate 
Countess, ascribed to Marston in the editions of 1613 
and 163 1, but not included in his collected works of 
1633.^ Mr. Payne Collier traced some of Barkstead's 
engagements from entries in the Dulwich MSS., show- 
ing that he joined Prince Henry's players, afterwards 
known as the Prince Palatine's company, and in 161 5 
joined a partnership at Alleyne's Rose on Bankside, a 
house which up to that time had been devoted to bear- 
baiting and similar sports.^ 

Among the principal comedians in The Silent Woman 
were also Giles Cary and William Penn, and next to 
them Hugh Atwell ; the list also containing the names 
of Richard Allen, John Smith, and John Blaney.* 
William Penn was a player of some distinction. He 
was one of the Prince's company at the Fortune, and 
joined the new company at the Hope on Bankside, 
where room was found for a stage alongside of the 
bear-pit and bull-ring. He was promoted into the 
King's service in 1629, the Lord Chamberlain's accounts 

^ Mirrha, the Mother of Adonis, or Lust's Prodigies, Stationers' 
Register, 12 Nov. 1607. 

2 Mr. Kemble, according to i^QBiographia Dramatica, possessed a copy 
with the name of Barkstead, as the author, on the title page ; and Mr. 
Payne CoUier mentions other copies inscribed with memoranda to the same 
effect {Memoirs of Actors, p. xxx. note i). See A. W. Ward, op. cit., 
ii. 481. Fleay, ti.s., ii. 80-1, supposes that Barkstead condensed The 
Insatiate Countess from a tragedy and comedy already existing. 

'^ Collier, u.s., p. xxx. note 2. 

* In the list: "Gil. Carie ; Will. Pen; Hug. Attawel ; Ric. AUin," 
etc. 



478 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

showing that he received the usual two years' livery : 
"four yards of bastard scarlet for a cloak, and a quarter 
yard of crimson velvet for the capes." Of Smith and 
Allen little seems to be known. Blaney was one of 
the actors at the Red Bull, before the old-fashioned 
house in the inn-yard was taken over by the Queen's 
servants. Gary, and probably Atwell, were members of 
the Prince Palatine's company, and were both engaged 
by Alleyne as members of his new troupe at the 
Rose. 

The boys who acted in The Silent Woman, with 
possible exceptions one way or the other, may be taken 
as representing the Children of Her Majesty's Revels, 
who continued the traditions of the Children of the 
Chapel at Blackfriars. They occupied the theatre from 
1603 till 1608. In the winter of 1604 took place their un- 
lucky performance of Jonson, Chapman, and Marston's 
Eastward' Ho, which was printed in the following 
spring.^ The King, as is well known, ordered certain 
passages to be cancelled, at the complaint of Sir James 
Murray, as libels on the Scottish nobility. The joint 
authors were brought before the Star Chamber : there 
was a likelihood, as Jonson told Drummond, "that they 
should then have had their ears cut and noses " ; and 
it was only upon their submission that His Majesty 
granted a pardon. The play, with the necessary 
omissions, was acted before James I. in 1614.^ About 
the same time, the children presented a play by 
Marston, Cocledenioy ; or, the Dutch Courtesan. This 
was one of the plays selected in 1613 for the entertain- 
ment of the Princess Elizabeth at Whitehall. Lang- 

^ Fleay, «.5., ii. 81 : "The date of production lies between that of 
Westward-Ho, ist Nov. 1604, and of Northivard-Ho, early in 1605." 
See also Collier, Annals, i. 356. 

^ The play is printed as modified in Dodsley, Old Plays, ed. 1825, 
iv. 183-280. For the story of Jonson's imprisonment, with its legendary 
details, see id., p. 189, note, and Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. A. Clark, 1898, 
ii. 12, 



PLAYS ACTED AT BLACKFRIARS, 1603-8 479 

baine describes it as a comedy several times presented 
at the Blackfriars, by the Children of the Queen's 
Majesty's Revels, and printed in quarto in 1605.^ He 
thought that the collection called Les Contes du Monde 
was the origin of the light-fingered heroine's pranks, 
"and cheating Mrs. Mulligrub, the Vintner's wife, of 
the goblet and salmon." Another version of the same 
story is to be found in the little novel of the Doctor of 
Laws, in Painter's Palace of Pleasure. 

Marston supplied the house with popular plays, such 
as Parasitaster, better known as The Fawn, ^ About 
the same time he gave them The Wonder of Women, 
or the Tragedy of Sophonisba, a musical piece, from 
which Malone collected many valuable directions. ^ 
Chapman supplied the Children with the classical piece 
known as All Fools, * which may have appeared, 
in the list of pieces acted at Whitehall in 1613, as 
A Knot of Fools ; and later, they acted his Conspiracy 
of Charles Duke of Byron. ^ 

In the introductory note to the present chapter we 
have hinted that The Tempest possibly may have been 
produced at Blackfriars during the boys' tenancy of 
the theatre. The date has always been a matter of 
dispute, and is not in itself of great importance. But 
the occasion of the play is of real interest, as showing 
some glimpse of the poet's own design. We may 



^ Fleay, ic.s., ii. 77, thinks that The Dutch Courtesan "was produced 
orig-inally" by the Children "when they were the Chapel children of 
Queen Elizabeth" {sic). 

2 Fleay, id., ii. 79, acted "undoubtedly in 1604." 

^ Fleay, ibid., thinks that 'this play (printed 1606) was acted by the 
Chapel Children before the plague and change of company, 

■* The title is " Al Fooles. A Comedy; presented at the Black Fryers 
and lately before his Majestie . . . 1605." 

^ Norihivard-Ho, in which Chapman was satirised under the name of 
Bellamont, and his French tragedies alluded to, has a reference to 
stage music, and possibly to the performance of this play at the Black- 
friars. " I . . . shall take some occasion, about the music of the fourth 
act, to step to the French king" (iv. i). See also supra, p. 462, note 3. 



48o PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" 

connect it with the marriage of Lord Essex in January, 
1606, and the fame at once accorded to Jonson's Masque 
of Hymen, as well as with the recent discoveries in 
New England, and the hope of restoring the lost colony 
in Virginia. If this be granted, we may assume that 
the production of The Tempest at Blackfriars, alluded 
to by Dryden, took place in 1606. If the boys, to 
whom the piece would be entirely suitable, produced 
it, it could not have been acted by them at Blackfriars 
later than the early part of 1608. We already have 
referred to the migration to Whitefriars. Early in 
1608, the Queen's company at Blackfriars was broken 
up, and the boys dismissed, by Philip Herbert, Earl 
of Montgomery, as Chamberlain of the Household. 
This appears from a letter from Sir Thomas Lake to 
the Earl of Salisbury, dated the nth of March, 1607-8, 
now among the domestic state papers in the Public 
Record Office.^ This document dealt with various cases 
of misconduct which had occurred in the theatres, more 
especially in connection with Welsh mines. "His 
Majesty was pleased with what your lordship adverteth 
concerning the committal of the players that have 
offended in the matter of France, and commands me 
to signify to your lordship that for the others who have 
offended in the matter of the Mines, and other lewd 
words, which is the children of Blackfriars, then though 
he signified his mind to your lordship by my lord of 
Montgomery, yet I should repeat it again : that his 
lordship had vowed they should never play more, but 
should for it beg their bread, and he would have his 
vow performed : and therefore my lord Chamberlain by 
himself, or your lordship at this table, should take order 
to dissolve them, and to punish the matter besides." 
In the sequel, another company was formed under the 
old title, as "the Children of her Majesty's Revels," 
sometimes called the "Children of Whitefriars," from 

1 Dom. State Papers (Jas. I.), vol. xxxi., no, 73. 



THE CHILDREN OF THE REVELS 481 

their occupation of the private house near the Temple. ^ 
We cannot tell how many of the Blackfriars boys were 
dismissed *'to beg their bread"; but, from the cast 
of The Silent Woman, we have seen that several new 
names appeared at once in the list of the Queen's 
Children of the Revels. The Blackfriars theatre was 
given over to the King's company, who acted there 
when the Globe happened to be closed. 



VI 

THE DISPUTE OF 1635 BETWEEN PROPRIETORS AND ACTORS 
AT THE GLOBE AND BLACKFRIARS 

Mr. HalHwell-Phillipps printed a curious series of 
documents about Blackfriars,^ embodying a statement 
which gained no credit at the time when it was made, 
and bears upon its face a number of obvious errors. In 
1635 there was a dispute about the profits of the Globe 
and Blackfriars. There was a lease of the former made 
in 1619, with about five years still to run, and another 
lease of the private house made about 1620, with four 
years to run. There was no lawsuit, or anything in the 
nature of litigation. The matter was referred to the 
summary decision of the Earl of Pembroke and Mont- 
gomery, as Chamberlain of the Household. The peti- 
tions and answers were kept among the official MSS. 
of the Lord Chamberlain's office at St. James' Palace, 
but are now preserved among the domestic state papers 
at the Public Record Office. Robert Benfield, with 
other actors in the King's company,^ petitioned for a 
share of the profits, which they wished to buy from 
some of the lessees who were neither actors nor em- 
ployed in His Majesty's service. As far as the Black- 

^ Patent granted to Philip Rosseter, Jan. 4, 1609-10. See Collier, 
Annals, i. 372. 2 „_^^ ;_ 212-19. 

^ The co-petitioners were Heliard Swanston and Thomas Pollard. 
2 I 



482 PRODUCTION OF "THE TEMPEST" 

friars house was concerned, they wished only to pur- 
chase at a fair price an extra one-eighth share belong- 
ing to the actor John Shanks. Another eighth share 
belonged at that time to Cuthbert Burbage, brother of 
Richard ; the remaining fractions belonged to Mrs. 
Winifred Burbage, Richard's widow,^ and William, 
son of Richard and Winifred. The five other shares 
belonged to Robinson, Taylor, Lowin, Condell, and 
Underwood respectively. The complaint was that the 
lessees or housekeepers were only six in number to 
the actors' nine ; but the minority had a full half of the 
receipts for boxes and galleries in both houses, and of 
the tiring-house door at the Globe. The actors had the 
other half, with the outer doors : yet out of their frac- 
tional profits they had to find the wages of hired men 
and boys, the music, lights, and so forth, beside the 
extraordinary charge ''which the actors are wholly at 
for apparel and poets." John Shanks, in reply, made 
out a good case for himself, as having spent much 
money in finding boys as apprentices.^ Cuthbert Bur- 
bage joined with his sister-in-law Winifred and her son 
William in a rambling statement, to which the Lord 
Chamberlain seems to have paid little regard. There 
were evidently several mistakes in the old stories, which 
Cuthbert tried to recollect, about what his father had 
done under Queen Elizabeth and early in the reign of 
King James. The elder Burbage, they said, had been 
a player when young, and became the first builder of 

^ Mrs. Richard Burbage had married a second time, and was now 
Mrs. Robinson. Her husband is mentioned by the actors in their second 
petition (printed by Collier, u.s., i. 313) as a housekeeper in rig-ht of his 
wife. He has been identified conjecturally with the actor Richard 
Robinson, mentioned by Ben Jonson, The Devil is att Ass, ii. 3. 

2 Printed zi.s., i. 316. Shanks speaks of himself as one "who hath still 
of his owne purse supplyed the company for the service of his Majesty 
with boyes, as Thomas Pollard, John Thompson deceased (for whome hee 
payed 40 li) . . . and at this time maintaines three more for the sayd 
service." As Pollard was one of the complainants, there was some 
additional point in this apology. 



DISPUTE AMONG KING'S PLAYERS 483 

playhouses. He built the Theatre at Shoreditch, and 
afterwards the Globe on Bankside. " Now for the 
Blackfriers," wrote Cuthbert, "that is our inheritance; 
our father purchased it at extreame rates, and made it 
into a playhouse with great charge and treble ; which 
after was leased out to one Evans, that first sett up the 
boyes commonly called the Queenes Majesties Children 
of the Chapell. In process of time, the boyes growing 
up to bee men, which were Underwood, Field, Ostler, 
and were taken to strengthen the King's service ; and 
the more to strengthen the service, the boyes dayly wear- 
ing out, it was considered that house would bee as fitt 
for ourselves, and soe purchased the lease remaining from 
Evans with our money, and placed men players, which 
were Hemings, Condall, Shakspeare &c. And Richard 
Burbage, who for thirty-five yeeres paines, cost and 
labour, made meenes to leave his wife and children 
some estate, and out of whose estate soe many of other 
players and their families have beene mayntained, these 
new men, that were never bred from children in the 
King's service, would take away with oathes and 
menaces that wee shall be forced and that they will not 
thank us for it ; soe that it seemes they would not pay 
us for what they would have or wee can spare, which, 
more to satisfie your honour then their threatening 
pride, wee are for ourselves willing to part with a part 
betweene us, they paying according as ever hath beene 
the custome and the number of yeeres the lease is made 
for." The document concludes with a reiteration of the 
deserts of the Burbages, and an appeal that Richard 
Burbage's widow should not be left to starve in her old 
age, which, in face of the fact that she was married 
again, loses a little of its pathos. 

It is obvious that there are gaps in the wording as 
well as the sense ; ^ but the statements are preserved 

^ e.g. the sentence beg-inning- "And Richard Burbage," in which the 
words "whose estate" are governed by "out of," and at the same time 
are transferred Kara (j\iv^(jiv as an object to the verb in the next sentence. 



484 PRODUCTION OF ''THE TEMPEST" 

only in what appears to be a clerk's transcript. Cuth- 
bert Burbage evidently confused two separate leases, 
one, relating to the Blackfriars house, for a term of 
twenty-one years from 1597, and another, relating to 
the Globe, for twenty-one years from 1598. To the 
renewal of these leases we already have alluded.^ The 
statement that one Evans ''first set up" the Children 
of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel can easily be shown to be 
a mistake ; but one Henry Evans seems to have been 
the lessee from the building of the theatre until 1604, 
when the Children of the Queen's Revels were formed 
into a company. Mr. Shanks, however, proved that 
he had offered to sell his part of the shares on fair 
terms ; and the Lord Chamberlain ordered Sir John 
Firett, Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels, and 
his own solicitor, Mr. Bedingfield, to fix an equitable 
price for the shares and to make a final agreement. 

^ In Lord Pembroke's decision, printed u.s., i. 313, we read "for the 
fower yeeres remayning of the lease of the house in Blackfriers, and for 
five yeeres in that of the Globe." 




INDEX 



N.B. — The italicised figures refer to pages where the person, place, or other subject 
is mentioned in the footnotes alone. 



Abbot, George, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, 309, 426, 430, 435 
Abel, Mr., of Nayland, Suffolk, 321 
Abergavenny, Baron. See Beau- 
champ, William, etc. 
Abingdon, Henry, of the Chapel 

Royal, 46g 
Abington, Northants, 267, and see 

Barnard, Baldwin, etc. 
Acarete da Biscay, Voyage of, quoted, 

366 
Acton, Middlesex, 190, 191, 225, 342, 

and see Hslll, John (2), and Rev. 

William 
Acts of the Apostles, quoted, 381-2 
Addison, Joseph, anecdote of, 57 
Adepts in magic, 386-7 
Admiral, the Lord : his players. See 

Howard, Sir Charles 
Aggas or Agas, Ralph : his map of 

London, 192-3 
Agnes, the name and its variants, 

28-30 
Agrippina. See Cologne 
Ague in seventeenth century, 308 
Aicher, Otto, Hortus Inscriptionunt 

of, quoted, 229, 234 
Ainsworth, William Harrison, Jack 

Sheppard, quoted, ig2 
Albans, Viscount St. See Bacon, 

Sir Francis 
Alcester, Warwickshire, 67, 68, 163 
Alchemist, The. See Jonson, Ben 
Alcock, William, of Tiddington, 133 



Aldersgate Street, E.C., 209, 301, 

and see Bell Inn and Pembroke 

House 
Ale-Conner or Ale -Taster, office of, 

78-9 
Ale, English, 282, 283 
Alexander, Sir William, Earl of 

Stirling, his plays, 443 
Alfonso L, King of Naples and the 

Two SiciHes, 375, 386 
Alfonso II. , King of Naples, etc. , j8j 
Algiers, pirate-ships of, 287, 288 
Alicante, Howell's visit to, 287, 288 ; 

wine of, 259 
Allen, Richard, actor, 477, 478 
Allen, Thomas, History of London 

referred to, 274 
Alleyne, Edward, actor - manager, 

477, 478 
All Fools. See Chapman, George 
Allsoppe, John, of St. Helen's parish, 

216 
All's Well that Ends Well. See 

Shakespeare, William (i) 
Almshouse of Stratford Guild, 86 
Altham, Richard, of Gray's Inn, 201 
Alvechurch, Worcestershire, 163 
Alveston, Warwickshire, 331, 1^2 
Amapaia, Province of, 357 
Amazons, legends concerning, 360-1 
Ame7ids for Ladies. See Field, 

Nathaniel 
Amersham, Bucks, 189 
Andrew by the Wardrobe, Church of 

St., E.G., 205, 452 



485 



486 



INDEX 



Andrew's Hill, St., E.G., 452 
Andrew Undershaft, Church of St., 

E.G., 212 
Angel Inn, Bishopsgate, E.G., 211 
Angers, Bishop of. See Le Maire, 

Guillaume 
Anjou, English conquest of, 336-7 
Anjou, equivalent for Angers, 152, /jj 
Anne, Ghurch of St., Blackfriars, 

E.G., 452, 453, 456; parish of, 181 
Anne, Guild of St., at Knowle, 

Warwicks., 112 
Anne of Denmark, Queen-Gonsort of 

James I., 240, 401, 402, 403, 410, 

411, 413. 414, 424, 429, 456, 475 
Antelope Inn at Oxford, 300 
Anthologia Palatina, quoted, 241 
Anthony, legend of St. , 366 
Antilles, Histoire Naturelle des lies. 

See Poincy, L. de 
Anti-Masques, 407, 408, 412 
Antimony, medical uses of, 305 
Antony and Cleopatra. See Shake- 
speare, William (i) 
Antwerp, Sir Thomas More at, 208 
Apocrypha, Shakespeare's references 

to the, 224 
Apollonius Rhodius, Scholiast on 

Argonautica of, quoted, 380 
"Apples of Love," synonym for 

tomatoes, 202 
Appleyard, Sir Mathew, his regiment, 

299 
" Apreeware," 122, and see Ypres 
Aquafortis, used by Sir W. Ralegh, 

358 
Arber, Prof. Edward, f.s.a., quoted, 

208 
Archenfield, Herefordshire, local cus- 
toms of bequest, 228 
Arch-Sewer, title of Elector Palatine, 

423 
Arden, Agnes, second wife of Robert 

(i), 116, 119, 120, 122 
Arden, Alice, daughter of Robert (l), 

116, 119, 120 
Arden, Edward, 321 
Arden, Forest of, 163-4 ; derivation 

of name, 165, 320 
Arden, Mary, daughter of Robert (i). 

See Shakespeare, Mary 
Arden, Robert (i), grandfather of 

Shakespeare, 25, 112, 115, 116, 

117; his will, 1 19-20 ; inventory 

of his property, 120-2 
Arden, Robert (i), of Park Hall, son 

of Edward, 321 
Argier, old form of Algiers, 286 ; 



Gastle of, sham sea-fight of, at 

Lambeth, 427-8 
Ariel, Joseph Hunter's theories as to, 

390-1 ; part of, on stage, 474-5 
Ariosto, Ludovico, Orlando Furioso 

of, quoted, 379, and see Harington, 

Sir John 
Aristolochia (birthwort), medical em- 
ployment of, 300 
Armstrong, Edward, Charles V., by, 

referred to, 361 
"Aroint thee," meaning of, 156 
Arraignment of Paris, The. See 

Peele, George 
Arromaia, Province of, 357, 358, 359, 

363 
"Arthur's Show," 196 
"Articulate Lady," the, 410, and 

see Devereux, Frances 
Arundel, Earl of. See Howard, 

Thomas (i) 
Arundel, Sir William, 136 
Arvi River, in Guiana, 362 
Asbies, Robert Arden's farm of, 116, 

119, 349 
Ascham, Roger, Toxophilus of, quoted, 

292 
Ashbury, Berks, Gromlech at, 3S0 
Ashfeld, Alice, prioress of St. Helen's, 

Bishopsgate, 206 
Ashmole, Elias, m.d., quoted, 247 
Ashmolean Museum, artificial dragon 

in, 299 
Assessment of St. Helen's parish, 

E.G., in 1598, 213-20 
Assize of Bread and Ale at Stratford, 

77-9 
Aston Gantlow, Warwickshire,'' parish 

of, 115, 119, 120, 132 
Aston, Tony, 194 

Astrology in medical profession, 306 
As You Like It. See Shakespeare, 

William (I) 
Atherstone-on-Stour, Warwickshire, 

345 
Atoica, River, in Guiana, 363 
Atwell, Hugh, actor, 477, 478 
Aubrey, John, quotations from, 46, 
47, 48, 50, 184, 185, 190-1, 260, 
286, 301, 302, 306, 312, 338, 343-8 
passim; references to, 81, 478; 
Rodd on, 328 
Auchmuty, James and John, 404 
Atirea Legenda. See Voragine, Jaco- 
bus de 
Aurelio and Isabella, romance of, 384 
Austen, James, of St. Martin Out- 
wich, E.G., 211 



INDEX 



487 



Avon, River, in Warwickshire, 150, 
153 ; meaning of name, 320 

Aylesbury, Bucks., 185, 188, 330; 
vale of, i8b 

B 

Bacharach, wines of, 285 
" Back-bare," sporting term, 169 
Bacon, Sir Francis, Viscount St. 
Albans, 195, 198, 201, 338, 432, 
433) 434; Essays quoted, 194-S, 
411, 413, 431, 433 ; his Masque of 
Flowers, 406-8 
Bad beginning makes a good ending. A, 

anonymous play, 435, 438 
Badger, George, of Stratford, 74, 75 
Bagenal or Bagnal, Sir Henry, 295 
Bagley, Edward, citizen of London, 

269, 271 
Bagley Wood, Berks., story of Dutch- 
man in, 310 
Bagpipes, story of their effect on 

wolves, 294-5 
Baheire, Robert, of Blackfriars, 456 
Bailiff, office of, at Stratford, 103-4 
Baker, Ellen. See Shakespeare, Ellen 
Baker, Mrs., of Shottery, 324 
Baker, Oliver, of Stratford, 100 
Balcony in private theatres, 459-60 
"Balk," substantive and verb, mean- 
ing of, 141 
Ball, Rev. Richard, of St. Helen's, 

Bishopsgate, 213 
Ballard, George, letter of Mr. Brome 

to, quoted, 339-40 
Balsall, Temple, Warwickshire, 81, 

no 
Balshall, Thomas, d.d. , Dean of 

Stratford, 81, 82 
Banbury, Oxon., 182, 188 
Banister, Gilbert, of the Chapel 

Royal, 4.bg 
Barbary, potatoes in, 203 
Barber Surgeons' Hall, E.G., 301 
Barford Bridge, Warwickshire, 188 
Barkstead, William, actor-dramatist, 
476-7 ; his Hiren referred to, 477 
Barlichway, Hundred of, Warwick- 
shire, 64, I2g 
Barnacle geese, 150 
Barnard, Baldwin, Esq., of Abington, 

Northants, 267 
Barnard, Dame Elizabeth, grand- 
daughter of Shakespeare, 30, 60, 
139, 140, 225, 226, 227, 231, 243, 
244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 256, 257, 
265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271 ; 
and see Barnard, Sir John ; Hall, 



John and Susanna ; and Nash, 
Thomas 

Barnard, Eleanor. See Cotton, Elea- 
nor 

Barnard, Elizabeth. See Gilbert, 
Elizabeth 

Barnard, Mary. See Higgs, Mary 

Barnard, Sir John, Bart., of Abing- 
ton, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271 

Barriers at Earl of Essex's wedding, 
419-20, and je^ Jonson, Ben 

Bartholomew Fair. See Jonson, Ben 

"Bartholomew's Day, Black," 262 

Barton-on-the-Heath, Warwickshire, 
116, 168 

Basel, Dance of Death at, 88 

Basing, William, Dean of St. Paul's, 
212 

Bassel, Laurence and Peter, of St. 
Helen's, Bishopsgate, 217 

Bastard wine, 259, 286 

Bath, Earl of, his players, 99 

Bath, Lord Chamberlain's players 
at, 99 

Bath, Municipal Records, quoted, 
99, 102 

Batlers at Oxford colleges, 340 

"Bavarian pouch," 366-7 

Bawkes, Sherrett, of St. Helen's, 
Bishopsgate, 217 

Baxter, Robert, actor, 471 

Bean, Alexander, intruded minister 
at Stratford, 261, 262 

Bear Inn at Stratford, 240, 307 

Bearley, Warwickshire, 116 

Bearwardens, companies of, 99 

Beauchamp, Anne, Countess of War- 
wick. See Neville, Anne 

Beauchamp, Henry, Duke of War- 
wick, 336 

Beauchamp, Richard (i), K.G., 14th 
Earl of Warwick, 317, 334, 335-6, 

337 
Beauchamp, Richard (2), Earl of 

Worcester, 108, jj6 
Beauchamp, Thomas (l), 12th Earl 

of Warwick, 334 
Beauchamp, Thomas (2), 13th Earl 

of Warwick, 334 
Beauchamp, William, Baron Aber- 
gavenny, 108 
Beauchamps, monuments of the, at 

Warwick, 330, 334-7 
Beaufort, Henry, Cardinal, Bishop of 

Winchester, 317-18 
Beaumont, Francis, Masque by, 432, 

433, and see Fletcher, John 
Bedford, Duke of. See John 



488 



INDEX 



Bedford, Earl of. See Russell, Sir 

John 
Bedingfield, Mr., solicitor to the 

Lord Chamberlain, 484 
Beer in England and Germany, 282, 

283 
Beeston, Christopher, actor, 48 
Beeston, Elizabeth, wife of Christo- 
pher, 48 
Beeston, William, son of Christopher 

and Elizabeth, 48, 343-8 passim 
Behren's Hercynia Curiosa referred 

to, 380 
Belle Sauvage Inn, 459 
Bell Inn, Aldersgate Street, E.C., 301 
Bell Inn, Carter Lane, E.C., 453, 459 
Bell, John, f.r.c.s. Edin., his visit 

to Stratford, 232 
Benedick and Beatrix, probable equiv- 
alent of Much Ado, 438, 444-5 
Benfield, Robert, actor, 481 
Bentley, actor, 180 
Bentley, Justice, of Kineton, 331 
Bentley, Thomas, M.D., President 

R.C.P., 85-6 
Bergamot at Long Melford, 281 
Berkeley, Henry, Baron, 193 
Bermudas, trials of colonists in, 474 
Bernard, Charles, serjeant-surgeon to 

Queen Anne, 339, 340 
Bernard or Barnard, Elizabeth, wife 

of Robert, of Abington, 268 
Bernwood Forest, Bucks., 186 
Berreo, Antonio, Spanish explorer, 

359, 364 

Bertulf, King of Mercia, 71, 72, 73 

Betony, medical uses of, 264 

Bettenham, Jeremy, formerly Reader 
of Gray's Inn, 201 

Betterton, Thomas, actor, 22, 47, 48, 
56, 57 

Bettis, Mr. , chief shipwright at Chat- 
ham, 427 

Bewdley, Worcestershire, cap-making 
at, 325 

Bicester, Oxon. , 182, 184, 186, 188 

Bicocca, Battle of, 386 

Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire, 67, 
68 

Billesley, Warwickshire, 37 

Billingsley, Sir Henry, Lord Mayor 
of London, 215 

Biographia Dramatica, quoted, 477 

Birch, Samuel, ll.d., D.C.L., 444, 
448 

Bird, Dr., Linacre Professor at Cam- 
bridge, 239 

Birmingham, Roman road at, 65, 67 



Biscay, Howell's adventure in, 294 
Bishopsgate Within, Ward of, 210 
Bishopton, Warwickshire, 64, 135, 140 
Black Bull Inn, Bishopsgate Street, 

E.C., 210, 213 
"Black Crosses," old name for St. 

Mark's Day, 24 
Blackfriars, Liberty of, description 

of, 451-3 
Blackfriars Theatre, 168, 206, 219, 

450-84 passim 
Blackness, Masque of. See Jonson, 

Ben 
Blackwater, Battle of the, 295 
Blaney, John, actor, 477, 478 
" Blindcinques," nickname for class 

of undergraduates, 345 
Blois, William de, Bishop of Worces- 
ter, 76 
Bloodhounds, varieties of, 171 
Bloody Brother, The. See Fletcher, 

John 
"Bloody hand," sporting term, 169 
Blue Boar Inn at Oxford, 300 
Bobart, Jacob, of the Oxford Physic 

Garden, 299, 300 
Bobart, Jacob, jun., 299 
Bohemia, King and Queen of. See 

Frederick and Elizabeth (i) 
" Bolt," sporting term, 167 
Bombards, 462-3 
Bon Chretien pears at Long Melford, 

281 
Bond, William, of Crosby Place, his 

monument, 209 
Bone-house at Chipping Norton, 184; 

at Stratford, 81, 230, 304, 341 
Bonnetto, Rocco, of Blackfriars, 458 
Bonvisi, Antonio, of Lucca, 208-9 
Booker, John, his "study of books," 

247 
Book of Common Prayer, 1559, quoted, 

23 

Booth, Charles, prompter at Drury 

Lane, 56 
Bordeaux, Scottish wine-merchants 

at, 284 
Bordesley, Warwickshire, priory of, 

107, 109 
Borsholder, traditional duties of the, 

123-4 
Boswell, James, jun., quoted, 384-5, 

400, 462 
Bottom, Drolls on the subject of, 

187-8, 445 
" Bouge of Court," meaning of, 463 
Boughton or Borton, William, curate 

of Aston Cantlow, 120. 



INDEX 



489 



Boyd or Bowy, Sergeant, 404 
"Brach," Shakespeare's use of word, 

171, 173 
Brackley, Viscount. See Egerton, Sir 

Thomas 
Braithwaite, Richard, 81 
Brand, John, F.S.A., Popular An- 
tiquities of, referred to, 25 
Brandenburg, Sir Edward Walker's 

mission to, 273-4 
Brandes, Georg, William Shakespeare, 

by, referred to, 233 
Brent, Sir Nathaniel, Vicar-General 

to Abp. of Canterbury, 233 
Bridewell, 452 ; palace at, 453 
Bridges, Rev. Gabriel, B.D. , 347 
Bridges, John, F.s.A. , History of 

Northants, quoted, 268 
Briggen, Walter, of St. Helen's 

parish, Bishopsgate, 218 
Brill, Bucks., 186 
Bristol, Lord Chamberlain's players 

at, 99 ; Tobacco trade at, 260 
Britton, John, F.S.A., quoted, 21-2 
Broadway, E.C., 451 
Broderick, William, embroiderer to 

James I., 431 
Bromefield, Alice. 5£i5 Spencer, Dame 

Alice 
Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, 163 
Bronchoceles, 367, and see Bavarian 

pouch 
Brooke, Baron. See Greville, Sir 

Fulke and Robert 
Brooke, Henry; K.G., Baron Cobham, 

206, 455, 458 
Brooksbank, Mr.,of Bucklersbury, 182 
Broom-groves, 146 
Brown, Raw don L., Catalogue of 

MSS., etc., quoted, 289 
Browne, Father, mentioned by Ward, 

240 
Browning, Robert, his Pippa Passes 

quoted, 290 
Bruni, Francesco. See Petrarca, Fran- 
cesco 
Brunswick, Duke of, 424 
Bryan, Sir Francis, 453 
Brydges, Sir Samuel Egerton, 444 
Buc, Buck, or Bucke, Sir George, 

Master of Revels, 443 
Buck, varieties of, 170 
Buckingham, Duke of. See Villiers, 

Sir George 
Buckinghamshire, Duke of. See Shef- 
field, John 
Buckinghamshire, Shakespeare in, 

essay on, referred to, 186 



Bucklersbury, 181, 182, 262, 263, 264 
"Budget," meaning of, 365 
Bulkley, Elizabeth, receipt-book of, 

quoted, 46g 
Bull-dogs, 172 

Bull Theatre. See Red Bull Inn 
Burbage, Cuthbert, son of James, 

482, 483, 484 
Burbage, James, 50, 180, 451, 453, 

457, 482, 483 
Burbage, Richard, son of James, 53, 

198, 226, 464, 472, 474, 482, 483 
Burbage, William, son of Richard, 

482 
Burbage, Winifred, wife of Richard. 

See Robinson, Winifred 
Burges, Rev. Mr., of Sutton Cold- 
field, 262 
Burghley, Baron. See Cecil, Sir 

William 
Burgoine, Sir Robert, of Wroxall, 1 10 
Burley, William, tract on Princess 

Elizabeth's wedding, by, quoted, 

427-32 
Burman, Stephen, of Rowington, 130 
Burn, Rev. Richard, D.C.L,, Eccle- 
siastical Law, quoted, 33-4 
Burnet, Great, plant, where found, 

192 ; curative virtues of, 265 
Burnet, Mr., of Stratford, 303, 323 
Burse, the. See Exchange, Royal 
Burton, Robert, Anatomy of Melan- 
choly, by, quoted, 125-6, 153, 310, 

367 
Bury St. Edmunds, Abbey of, 281, 

282 
Bush, Paul, Bishop of Bristol, 303, 

304 
Bussy d^Ambois. See Chapman, 

George 
"Busy-less," 373 
Butcher, trade of, 349-50 
Butler, James, K.G., 1st Duke of 

Ormonde, 273 
Butler, Samuel, author of Hudibras, 

348 
Butler's Marston, Warwickshire, 327, 

330-1, 332 
Byron, Conspiracy of Charles, Duke 

of. See Chapman, George. 



Cacodsemon, use of word in Shake- 
speare, etc., 315-16 
Csesar, Sir Julius, Master of Rolls, 150 
Ccesar's Tragedye, probably old form 
oi Julius CcEsar, 439, 442-3 



490 



INDEX 



Cage, the, house of Thomas Quiney 

in Stratford, 258 
Caius, John, M.D,, tract on British 

Dogs, quoted, 17 1-2 
Cala Croce, in island of Lampedusa, 

375 
Calderon de la Barca, Pedro, Bien 

vengas, Mai of, quoted, 420 
Caldwall, Daniel, letter of Howell 

to, 282 
Caldwell, Florens, epitaph on. See 

Martin's, St., Ludgate, Church of 
Calendarium Genealogicuin, quoted, 

23 

Caliban, Joseph Hunter on, 387-8 

Caltha, See Cutwode, Thomas 

Cambridge, Privy Council order con- 
cerning thatched roofs at, 147 

Camden, William, Clarenceux king- 
of-arms, 104 ; his Britannia (in 
Holland's translation), quoted, 94, 
I2S, I2g, 14s, 183, 1S6, i8g, 294 

Camomile, legend concerning, 313 

Campion, Thomas, poet and phy- 
sician. Masque by, 402-3 ; his 
Masque of Frantics or Lords' 
Masque, 430-1 

Canary wine, 285 

Cane tobacco, 260, 466 

Cannibals, reference by Ralegh to, 
362 

Cantelupe, Walter de. Bishop of 
Worcester, 76 

Canterbury bells, synonym for "lady- 
smock," 158 

Cantilupe, John de, of Snitterfield, 
107-8 

Canton, heraldic term, 414, 41^ 

Canuri, Province of, 363 

Caora, River, in Guiana, 363 

Capell, Edward, editor of Shake- 
speare, 41, 51 

Capon, Barbery, of St. Helen's 
parish, Bishopsgate, 217 

Captain, The. See Fletcher, John 

Cardano, Cardema, or Cardenno, 
anonymous play, 438 

Carduus Benedictus , reference to, by 
Shakespeare, 263 

Carew, Sir George, Earl of Totnes, 

333 
Carew, Joyce, Countess of Totnes, 

333 

Carew, Thomas, poet, 279 

Carey, Sir George, 2nd Baron Huns- 
don, son of Sir Henry, 456, 458 

Carey, Sir Henry, K.G., 1st Baron 
Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain, 455, 



456 ; his monument, 335, 4S(> ', his 

players, 99, 100 
Caribane, 365 

Carichana, Humboldt at, 365 
Carleton, Alice, sister of Sir Dudley, 

401, 404, 429, 432 
Carleton, Sir Dudley, Viscount Dor- 
chester, letters by, quoted, 375, 

414 ; letters to, quoted, 404-6, 

425, 426, 427, 436, 437 ; and see 

Chamberlain, John ; Lake, Sir 

Thomas ; and Winwood, Sir Ralph 
Carline, Maltese thistle, 377 
Carlo Emanuele, Duke of Savoy, 438 
Carnations, varieties and treatment 

of, 162 
Caro, Di, page of Alfonso I. of 

Naples, 375_ 
Caroli, River, in Guiana, and its falls, 

358, 362, 363 
Carpenter, Jenken, town clerk of 

London, 87 
Carr, Frances. See Devereux, Frances 
Carr, Robert, Earl of Somerset, 398, 

400, 401 
Carte, Thomas, historian, referred 

to, 94 
Carter Lane, E.C., 451, 452, 453 
Cartwright, Rev. William, dramatist, 

185 ; his Ordinary referred to, 261 
Cary, Giles, actor, 477, 478 
" Case, to," sporting term, 167 
Castle, William, clerk of Stratford 

parish church, 328, 332-3 
Caterina, Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, 

290 
Catiline, his Conspiracy. See Jonson, 

Ben 
Caviare, references to, 260-1 
Cawarden, Sir Thomas, Master of 

the Revels, 453, 455, 458 
Cawdrey, Ralf, butcher at Stratford, 

348-9 
Cecil, Sir Robert, k.b., ist Earl of 

Salisbury, 199 ; letter to, quoted, 

480 ; and see Lake, Sir Thomas 
Cecil, Sir William, Baron Burghley, 

195, 199, 219 
Chadshunt, Warwickshire, 331, and 

see Newsham, Charles 
Chaise-Dieu, La, Haute-Loire, Danse 

Macabre at, 89 
"Chaldsean Philosophy," Hunter on, 

386-7 
Chalgrove field, Beds., 134 
Challenge at Tilt. See Jonson, Ben 
Challoner, William, of Tiddington, 

132, 133 



INDEX 



491 



Chalmers, Alexander, F.s.A., quoted, 

42 ; referred to, 4^6 
Chalmers, George, quoted, 50, 442 ; 

referred to, 447, 476 
Chamberlain, Dr., of Westminster, 

quoted, 243 
Chamberlain, John, letters of, quoted, 

401-2, 404, 405, 406, 425, 426, 

429, 431, 432, 433, 434, 435, 436, 

437 

Chamberlain, the Lord : his company 
of players. See Carey, Sir Henry 

Chambers, John, Bishop of Peter- 
borough, 303 

Chambre, John, m.d.. Dean of St. 
Stephen's, Westminster, 303 

Chancery Lane, wild flowers in, 192 

Chantrey, Sir Francis L., sculptor, at 
Stratford, 232 

Chantries, Return of, 1546, referred 
to, 97 

Chapel Royal, Children of the, 450, 
464, 469-75. 478 

Chapel Royal, Old Cheque-Book of, 
quoted, 396, 397, 401, 428, 429-30, 
4bg, 470-1 

Chapman, George, dramatist, 47, 432, 
473 ; his All Fools, 441, 463, 479 5 
Bussy d^Ambois, 472 ; Byron, Con- 
spiracy of Charles, Duke of, 462 ; 
479 ; Eastward- Ho, see Jonson, 
Ben ; Humorous Day's Mirth, 
368-9 ; Masque by, performed, 432 

Chari Christ, Irish euphemism for 
wolves, 294 

Charing Cross, 191 

Charlecote, near Stratford-on-Avon, 
38, 322, 328 

Charles L, King of England, 272, 
444; as heir-apparent, 400, 401, 

427, 429. 431. 434. 436, 438 
Charles IL, King of England, 439 ; 

plays in his library, 440 
Charles V., Emperor, and King of 

Spain, 287, 3ig ; his visit to 

London, 453 
Charles VIL, King of France, 297 
Chitillon, Battle of, 296 
Chaucer, Geoffrey, quoted, 1 75) 453 
Chaworth, Dr., 302 
Cheap, Ward of, 212 
Cheap, West, 263 
Cheetah sent to James L, 437 
Chepstow Castle, Monmouthshire, .^^c? 
Cherry, Francis, benefactor of Thos. 

Hearne, 340 
Cheshire, hunting in, 175 ; proverb 

used in, 156 



Chester, termination of Watling 

Street, 66 
Chesterton, John de, lord of manor 

of Stratford, 320 
Chettle, Henry, Kind-hartes Dreame, 

by, quoted, 52-3 
Cheyney, Sir Thomas, K.G., Treasurer 

of the Household, 453 
Chichele, Henry, Archbishop of Can- 
terbury, 318 
Chichester, Collins the poet at, 383 
Child, Thomas, of St. Helen's parish, 

Bishopsgate, 211-12 
Children of the Revels, the Queen's, 

426, 427, 464.. 471, 473. 475-81, 

and see Blackfriars and Whitefriars 

Theatres 
Chiltern Hills, Bucks., 188 
Chioppines or Chapins at Venice and 

elsewhere, 291-2 
Chippenham, Wilts., 260 
Chipping Norton, Oxon., 182, 183, 

184 
Choristers of Stratford Church : their 

order of life, 81 
Choughs, 151-2; Act of Parliament 

for destruction of, 152 
Christ Church, Oxon., performance 

of Palamon and Arcyte in, 176 
Church-Enstone, Oxon., 184 
Church Entry, E.C., 452 
Cibber, Theophilus, 49 
Cicero, de Divinatione, quoted, 300 
Cinquepace, 408, and see Galliard 
Cioll or Sciol, Cecilia and German, 

of Crosby Place, E.C., 209 
City of London Records, referred to, 

212 
Clapham, Surrey, Samuel Pepys' 

house at, 449 
Clare Market. See Tennis Court 

Theatre 
Clarence, Duke of. See George 
Clarendon, Earl of. See Hyde, Ed- 
ward 
Claret, 259, 260, 265, 284, and see 

Bordeaux 
Clary, purple and wild, 192 
Clary, spirit of, used in manufacturing 

wines, 285 
Clerkenwell, Middlesex, 211, 346, 

and see Red Bull Inn. 
Clifton, A. B., Cathedral Church of 

Lichfield, by, ref. to, 338 
" Clodpate, Mr. Justice," 328 
Cloister Court, Blackfriars, E. C, 

452 
Clopton, Anne, wife of William, 333 



492 



INDEX 



Clopton, Dame Barbara, wife of Sir 

John ( I), 272, 273 
Clopton, Eglantine, wife of Thomas 

(2), 82 
Clopton family, 116; their coat-of- 

arms, 320-1 ; their monuments, 82, 

333 ; their Suffolk collaterals, 280. 
Clopton House, rebuilding of, 272 
Clopton, Sir Hugh (i), of Clopton, 

Lord Mayor of London, 63, 82, 85, 

95, 115, 320 
Clopton, Sir Hugh (2), of Clopton 

(fl. 1742), 60, 269, 272 
Clopton, Sir John (i), of Clopton, 272, 

321 
Clopton, Sir John (2), of Kentwell, 

Suffolk, 280-1 
Clopton, Joyce, daughter of William 

and Anne. See Carew, Joyce. 
Clopton, Thomas (i), brother of Sir 

Hugh(i), 115 
Clopton, Thomas (2), of Clopton (d. 

1643), 82 
Clopton, Walter, of Cockfield, Suffolk, 

280 
Clopton, William, of Clopton, jjj 
Clopton, Sir William, of Kentwell, 280 
Clutterbuck, Ferdinando, draper, of 

Bishopsgate ward, 215 
Cobden, Rev. Edward, Vicar of Acton, 

Middlesex, 242 
Cobham, Baron. See Brooke, Henry, 

and Oldcastle, Sir John 
Cockfield, Suffolk. See Clopton, 

Walter 
Cockle, 161 

Cockle-demoys, small coins, 432 
Cock LorelPs Boat, quoted, 352 
Cockpit Theatre, ^^if Phoenix Theatre 
Cockpit at Whitehall, 433, 446 
Cocledemoy. See Marston, John 
Coel, early British king, 93, 94 
Cokain, Sir Aston, quoted, 437 
Coke, Sir Edward, Lord Chief Justice, 

129, 150, 410 
Colchester, legendary origin of, 93, g4 
Colesborne, Gloucestershire. See 

Higgs, Thomas. 
College-house at Stratford, 80, 343 
Collier, John Payne, f.s.a., 776, 443, 
451, 457, 45S, 459, 463, 4^5, 472, 

474, 477, etc. 
CoUingwood, Ralph, Dean of Lich- 
field, 81 
Collins, Arthur, his Peerage referred 

to, 412 
Collins, Francis, lawyer, of Warwick, 
226, 230 



Collins, William, poet, 383, 384, 385 
Cologne (Agrippina), death of Maria 

de' Medici at, 273 
Colonna, Prospero, 38^ 
Coloquintida, 263 
Colt's-foot, used to adulterate tobacco, 

205, 466 
Comb, Mary, of Stratford, 245 
Combe, John, of Stratford, 81, 82, 

127, 139, 148, 231, 333, 346 
Combe, Thomas, of Stratford, 81, 226 
Combe, William, of Stratford, 139, 

148, 149, 150 
" Combes," Justice, of Stratford, 321 
Comedy of Errors. 6'^if Shakespeare, 

William (i) 
Commin, Walter, of Snitterfield, 107 
Commin, William, father of Walter, 

107 
Commines, Philippe de. Dent's trans- 
lation of, 38^ 
Common-fields at Stratford, 134-5, 

140 
Compton - by - Brailes, Warwickshire, 

39 
Compton, Elizabeth, wife of William, 

210 
Compton, William, k.g., Earl of 

Northampton, 199, 210, 240 
Compton, Sir William, of Compton- 

by-Brailes, Warwickshire, jp 
Condamine, C. M. de la, Voyage of, 

quoted, 360-1 
Condell, Henry, actor, 226, 464, 482, 

483 
Conduit, the Great, near West Cheap, 

263 
Conduit-heads at Marylebone, 165, 

190, 191, 192 
" Coney-gree," meaning and uses of, 

134 
Coningsby, Ralph, lord of manor of 

Stratford, 320 
Constable, Legend of, at Grendon 

Underwood, Bucks., 184-8 
Constable, Office of, at Stratford, 79 
Constable Marshal at the Temple, 

196 
Constantius Chlorus, 94 
Contes du Monde, Les, referred to, 479 
Conway, Sir John, of Luddington, 27 
Cooke, James, surgeon, of Warwick, 

239, 240, 248, 249, 250 
Coombe Keynes, Dorset, Tithing-man 

of, 124 
Cooper, Anthony Ashley, Earl of 

Shaftesbury, 308 
Coranto, The, 195, 408, 409, 415 



INDEX 



493 



Coriolanus. See Shakespeare, William 

(I) 

Cornachine, Dr., of Pisa, 305 

Corney, Bolton, essay on Shake- 
speare's birthday, quoted, 22 

Cornish, William, of the Chapel 
Royal, 4bg 

Cornwallis, Sir Charles, referred to, 

425 
Cornwallis, Sir William, son of Sir 

Charles, Essays by, quoted, 371-2 
Coronelli, Vincenzo, his Specchio del 

Mare referred to, 374, 375, 378 
Coryat, Thomas, his Crudities re- 
ferred to, 128 
Cosin, Richard, lawyer, of Worcester, 

36 
Coto, ailment prevalent in South 

America, 366 
Cots wold sports, 168 
Cotton, Eleanor, wife of Samuel, 269, 

271 
Cotton, Sir Robert. See Pory, John 
Cotton, Samuel, of Henwick, Beds., 

269 
Coughton, Warwickshire, 67 
Courante. See Coranto 
Court, Grace, daughter of following, 

240 
Court, Mr., apothecary, of Stratford, 

240, 264 
Court-leet, Charge of, quoted, 373 
Coutances, John de. Bishop of Wor- 
cester, 320 
Covel, Rev. John, D. D. , Z>mryquoted, 

146 
Coventry, Free School at, 108 ; Hunter 

on Shakespeares of, 109 
Coventry, Sir William, Commissioner 

of the Navy, 331 
Cowell, John, ll.d.. Interpreter of, 

quoted, 142 
Cox, on history of Long Melford, 

quoted, 281 
Coxcomb, The. See Fletcher, John 
Coxeter, Thomas, bookseller and 

antiquary, 441 
' ' Crack," meaning and use of word, 

467 
Craig, Mr. W. J., his edition of 

King Lear referred to, 341 
Cranmer, Thomas, his version of the 

Bible referred to, 382 
Craven, Holy Weils in, 93 
Creed Lane, E.G., 451 
Creighton, Charles, M.D., \i\% History 

of Epidemics referred to, 243, 245, 
309, 425, 46g 



Crendon. See Grendon Underwood, 

Long Crendon 
Cressingham Court-rolls, referred to, 

29 
Creswick, Francis, wine-merchant, of 

Bristol, 259 
Crofts, Sir James, friend of Howell, 

289, 358 
Croke, Sir George, judge. Reports 

quoted, 29-30 
Cromwell, Oliver, story of, 325-6 
Crosby, Dame Anne, wife of Sir 

John, 208 
Crosby, Sir John, of Crosby Place, 

206-8 
Crosby Place, Bishopsgate, E.G., 199, 

206-10, 213, 215, 234 
Crow-flowers, 157-8 
"Crown Imperial," flower, 162 
Crown Inn, Oxon., 346, 347 
Croydon, Surrey, Dance of Death in 

Archbishops' palace at, 88 
Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru, 

The. See Davenant, Sir William 
Crusius, Martinus. See Kraus, Martin 
Crystal in Guiana, 364; Mountain 

of. 359 

Cuckoo-buds, 158-9 

Cuckoo-flowers, 158 

Cullymore, Dr., of St. Helen's, 
Bishopsgate, 217 

Culpeper or Culpepper, Nicholas, 
306, 425 

Cumana, Ralegh at, 363 

Cunningham, Peter, paper by, re- 
ferred to, 434 

Cupid's Revenge. See Fletcher, John 

Curiapan, Ralegh at, 359 

Curll, pamphlet on Essex divorce 
published by, referred to, jgg 

Curtain in theatres, use of, 460 

Curtain Theatre, Shoreditch, E., 50, 

471 
Cutler, Mr., story of, 310 
Cutwode, Thomas, Caltha, by, quoted, 

160, 162 
Cymbeline. See Shakespeare, William 

(I) 
Cynthia's Revels. See Jonson, Ben 
Cyprus, crape from, 454 ; and Venice, 

290 

D 

Daffodils in Shakespeare, 162 
Dagon, Hunter's theories as to 

Caliban and, 387-8 
Dalam, William, schoolmaster of 

Stratford, 98 



494 



INDEX 



Dance of Death at Stratford and 

elsewhere, 87-92 
Dancers, the High, at Somerset's 

marriage, 404-5 
Daniel, Mr., of Long Melford, 281 
Daniel, Samuel, and the Children of 

the Revels, 475-6 ; his Vision of 

the Twelve Goddesses, 412-13 
Danish Archives at Record Office, 

referred to, 437 
Danson, Mr., tailor to James I., 431 
Darby, Alderman, of Fenchurch 

Street, E.G., 207 
Darnel, 160-I 

Davenant, John (i), Bishop of Salis- 
bury, 347 
Davenant, John (2), vintner, of Ox- 
ford, 46, 347 
Davenant, Mrs., wife of John (2), 

46, 347- 
Davenant, Nicholas, son of John (2), 

347. 
Davenant, Rev. Robert, son of John 

(2), 46, 347 
Davenant, Sir William, 45-8, 59, 

302, 346, 347, 348, 441, 444, 461 ; 

his Shakespearean revivals, 56-8 ; 

his Siege of Rhodes, etc., 461 ; his 

Wits, 444 
Davenport, Rev. James, d.d., Vicar 

of Stratford, 232 
Davies, John, of Hereford, epigrams 

by, quoted, 55, 368, 472 
Davies, Rev. John, D.D., of Mallwyd, 

Merionethshire, his Welsh Gram- 
mar, 279 
Davies, Sir John, epigram by, quoted, 

50 ; his Orchestra quoted, 409 
Davies, Rev. Richard, Vicar of 

Sapperton, Gloucestershire, quoted, 

40-1, 330. 
Davies, Thomas, prompter, quoted, 

S3. 58 
Davis, Mr. C. E. , Mineral Baths of 

Bath, by, referred to, 99 
Dawkins, Prof. W. Boyd, Cave 

Hunting, by, referred to, 380 
Day, Mr. , surgeon at Oxford, 300 
Day, Thomas, actor, 471, 476 
De Clifford, Lord, sale of family 

papers belonging to, 327 
"Deck, to," dispute as to meaning 

of, 420-1. 
Deer-hounds, Irish, 172 
Dekker or Decker,Thomas, dramatist, 

his Satiro-Mastix, 53-5 ; quoted, 

55. 472- 
Dekker, Thomas, and Middleton, 



Thomas, ^€\x Roaring 6^zWquoted, 

51 
Dekker, Thomas, and Webster, John, 

their Northward- Ho, j'o ; their 

Westward-Ho, quoted, etc., 50-1, 

196-7, 4.78 
Delabarr, Mrs., patient of John Hall, 

241 
Denham, Sir John, 185 
Deputies, Alderman's, for City Wards, 

211-12 
Derby, Earl of. See Stanley, Henry 
Derby, Shakespeares of, 109 
"Derbyshire neck," synonym for 

goitre, 366 
Dethick, Sir William, Garter king- 

of-arms, 104 
Devereux, Frances, Countess of Essex, 

395-422, passim 
Devereux, Lettice, Countess of Essex 

(afterwardsofLeicester),her players, 

100 
Devereux, Robert, k.g., 2nd Earl of 

Essex, 199, 395, 397 
Devereux, Robert, 3rd Earl of Essex, 

395-422, passim, 480 
Devereux family, of Shustoke, War- 
wickshire, 321 
Devil is an Ass, The. See Jonson, 

Ben. 
D'Ewes, Sir Simonds, quoted, 425 
" Dewlapped mountaineers," origin 

of phrase, 365-7 
Dialect Dictionary, English, referred 

to, 141 
Diamonds in Guiana, 364 
Diaphoretics, use of, in medicine, 

305 
Dibdin, Rev. Thomas Frognall, D. D. , 

quoted, 449 
Dictionary of National Biography, 

referred to, 231, 2gg, joj, 339 
Diella, book of sonnets by R. L., 

quoted, 322 
Digby, Sir Kenelm, 301, 305 
Digges, Leonard, verses by, quoted, 

231, 442, 445, 446 
Diplomas, medical, how obtained, 225 
" Dislodge," sporting term, 167 
D'Israeli, Isaac, Curiosities of Liter- 
ature, quoted, 411 
Dive - dapper, the, mentioned by 

Shakespeare, 153 
Dodda, Lewin, pre-Conquest farmer 

of Wilmcote, 115 
Dodwell, Warwickshire, 97 
"Dog-draw," sporting term, 169 
Dogs in Shakespeare, 170-6 



INDEX 



495 



Dogs, tract on English. See Caius, 
John 

Domesday Book, referred to, 73, 115, 
135, 228 

Domestic State Papers, Calendar of, 
quoted, 233, etc. 

Dominicans at Blackfriars, 451 

Dorado, El, king of the headless 
men, 364 

Dorchester, Marquess of. See Pierre- 
pont, Henry 

Dorchester, Viscount. See Carleton, 
Sir Dudley 

Dort, wine-trade at, 283 

Douce, Francis, 374 ; his Dance of 
Death referred to, 88, 8g 

Douthwaite, W. R. , Gray's Inn, by, 
quoted, 193, 194, 195, 196, 199, 201 

Dover, Robert, of Barton -on -the - 
Heath, 168 

Dowdall, Mr., his letter to Edward 
Southwell, 39-40, 327-38, 348. 

Downes, John, his Roscitis Angli- 
caniis, quoted, 55, 56, 57-8 

"Dowsabel," Shakespeare's use of 
name, 199 

Drake, Sir Francis, quoted, 365-6 

Draycot, Wilts., Tithing-man at, 124 

Drayton, Michael, 240, 306, 310, 311, 
345, 441 ; his Pastorals quoted, 
199; his Poly-Olbion quoted, 66, 
67-8, 70 

Droeshout, Martin, his portrait of 
Shakespeare, 232 

Droitwich, Worcestershire, Leland at, 
163 

" Drolleries," use of word, 411 

Drummond, William, of Hawthorn- 
den. See Jonson, Ben 

Drunkenness in 17th century, 309-IO 

Drury Lane Theatre, 461 

Dryden, John, his Essay on Dramatic 
Poetry of the Last Age referred to, 
442 ; his alteration of The Tempest 
referred to, 313, 480; its preface 
quoted, 45-6, 450 

Duck, Wild, mentioned in Shake- 
speare, 153 

Dudley, Sir, Ambrose, Earl of War- 
wick, 75, 129 ; his bearwardens 
and tumblers, 99 ; his plavers, 100, 
180 

Dudley, Sir Edward, 4th Baron Dud- 
ley ; his bearwardens, 99 

Dudley family, Earls of Warwick, 337 

Dudley, John, Duke of Northumber- 
land and Earl of Warwick, ^g, 81, 
104, 320 



Dudley, Sir Robert, k.g., Earl of 
Leicester, his players, 99, 100, 180 
Dugdale, Sir William, Garter king- 
of-arms, his Antiquities of War- 
wickshire, quoted, 64, 67, 75, 76, 
81, 82, 84, 85, 107-8, 112, 115-16, 
129, 132, 135-6, 250, 322; referred 
to, 72, 86, 336 ; Diary referred to, 
23 1 ; History of St. PauVs referred 
to, 89 ; Monasticon Anglicanwn 
referred to, i8g, 451, 4^3; Origines 
Jtiridiciales quoted, 194, 195, 200 
Duley, John, of Tiddington, 133 
Dulwich, MSS. preserved at, 458, 

462 
Dumb Night, The. See Machin, 

Lewis ; Markham, Gervase. 
Dunbar, John Taylor at, 404 
Dunsmore Heath, Warwickshire, 67 
Dunstable, Temple of Diana at, 65 
Dupont, M., L' Homme pendant les 

Ages de la Pierre, referred to, 380 
Duret or Duretto, the, species of 

dance, 408 
Dutch Courtesan, or Cocledemoy. See 

Marston, John 
Dutchman at Oxford, story of, 310 
Dynne, Francis, servant to Laurence 
Bassel, of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 
217 

E 

Eadbert, Bishop of Worcester, 72, 73 

Earth-nuts, 164 

" Earth upon earth," poems and 

epitaphs on subject, 95-6 
East India Company, Early be- 
ginnings of, 209 
Eastward-Ho. See Jonson, Ben 
Eden, Richard, his Historic of Tra- 

vayle referred to, j^j" 
Edgehill, Warwickshire, 163, 328 ; 

Battle of, 331 
Edingdon, Wilts., house of Bon- 

hommes at, 303 
Edmonds, Sir Clement, of Preston, 

Northants, 268 
Edward, Earl of Warwick, son of 

George, Duke of Clarence, 108 
Edwards, John, of Tiddington, 133 
Edwards, Richard, of the Chapel 

Royal, his Palamon and Arcyte, 176 
Edwards, Thomas, sydesman of St. 

Helen's, Bishopsgate, 213 
Egerton, Sir Thomas, Baron EUes- 

mere and Viscount Brackley, 148 
Eglisham, George, M.D. , his Pro- 

dromus Vindicice referred to, 243-4 



496 



INDEX 



Eldorado, Region and city of, 357, 
362 

Elizabeth (i). Princess of England, 
Countess Palatine of the Rhine, 
and Queen of Bohemia, 240, 254, 
399. 400, 423-49 /am'OT 

Elizabeth (2), Queen of England, 129, 
176, 262, 361, 4S5> 475; her 
company of players, 180 ; of 
tumblers, 99 

Elizabeth (3) de Bourbon, Queen- 
Consort of Philip IV. of Spain, 292 

Elks brought to England, 437 

Ellacombe, Rev. H. N., Vicar of 
Bitton, Gloucestershire, his Plant- 
lore of Shakespeare, quoted, 161 

Ellesmere, Baron. See Egerton, Sir 
Thomas 

Elze, Karl, his William Shakespeare 
referred to, 233 

"Embossed," meaning of, 173-4 

Emeria, Province of, 357, 359 

Encomienda, system of, in Spanish 
colonies, 361 

Englefield, Sir Francis, J9 

Entrance to stage in early theatres, 
460 

Entries, Book of, for Worcester 
diocese, referred to, 262 

Epigrams. See Davies, John and 
Sir John ; FitzGeffrey, Charles ; 
Jonson, Ben 

"Epistlers," chosen from boys of 
Chapel Royal, 470 

Erasmus, his Latin and English 
dialogues, referred to, 102 

Espousals, Contracts of, 31-2; royal, 
426-7 

Essex, Countess of. See Devereux, 
Frances and Lettice 

Essex, Earl of. See Devereux, Robert 

Essex House, banquet at, 435 

Ethelburga, St., Bishopsgate, church 
and parish of, 210, 213 

Ethelwulf, King of Wessex, 71, 72 

Eusebius, 338 

Eustace, Abbot of Flay, his preaching- 
tour in England, 76 

Evans, Henry, theatrical manager, 
469, 476, 483, 484 

Evelegh, Rev. Charles, m.d., of 
Harberton, Devon, 304 

Evelyn, John, Diary, quoted, 449 

Everkeston, Leicestershire, 129 

Every Man in His Humour. See 
Jonson, Ben 

Every Man out of His Humour . See 
Jonson, Ben 



Evesham, Abbey of, connection with 

Shottery, 135-6 
Evesham, Hugh of, cardinal and 

physician, 303 
"Evil-town," 381 
Ewaipanoma, the headless nation, 

362 
Exchange, Royal, Queen Elizabeth's 

visit to, 262, ^55 
Exchequer Records, referred to, 103 
Exeter House, will of Lady Barnard 

proved at, 270 
Experienced Fowler, The, quoted, 

I5i> 154 
Exton, Lord Harington of. See Har- 

ington, John 
Eye-bright, powdered, 264 



"Fading" and "fadow," country 

dances, 403 
Fairfax, Sir Thomas, 3rd Baron 

Fairfax of Cameron, 294 
Fairs at Stratford, 75, 76, 95 
Falck, Jacob, Dutch ambassador, 

monument of, 234 
Falcon Inn at Stratford, 307 
Falstafe, Sir John, play of, 439, 

44576 
Familiar spirits, 390 
Fanshawe, Mrs., 344 
Farmer, Rev. Richard, d.d., f.s.a., 

master of Emmanuel College, 

Cambridge, referred to, 60, 372 
Farnham, Nicholas de. Bishop of 

Durham, 303 
Farryner, baker in Pudding Lane, 

E.C.,274 
Fastolf, Sir John, K.G., 446 
Fatal Dowjy, The. See Massinger, 

Philip 
Faulconbridge or Fauconberg, Thos., 

his attack on London, 207 
Fawn, buck of first year, 170 
Fawn, The. See Marston, John 
Fayrecook, Davye, servant to Laurence 

Bassel, 217 
Feather-workers of Blackfriars, 454 
Fecamp, Dance of Death at, 88 
Fee for performance of play, official, 

438 
Fennell, J., Shakespeare Repository 

referred to, 239^ 249, 264 
Fenton, Elijah, his edition of Waller, 

quoted, 439 
Ferdinand I. (Ferrante), King of 

Naples, 386 



INDEX 



497 



Fernandez, Mr., of Lampedusa, 375, 
378 _ 

Ferns, expulsion of rats from bishopric 
of, 29s 

Festus, Sext. Pompeius, Jonson's 
debt to, 416 

Fevers, varieties of, 243, 305-9 

Field, Mr., tanner, of Stratford, 
father of Richard, 180 

Field, Nathaniel, actor- dramatist, 47, 
466, 467, 469, 471, 472, 473, 474, 
475. 476, 477, 483 ; his plays, 473 

Field, Richard, printer, 180 

Fielden of Warwickshire, 163 

Fifteen, tax of the, 213, 219 

Pilaster. See Philaster and Fletcher, 
John 

Fille, Richard, benefactor of Strat- 
ford guild, 84 

Fire of London, Great, 274 

Firett, Sir John, 484 

Fish, Simon : his Supplication of the 
Beggars, 316 

Fisher's Antiquities of Warwickshire, 
referred to, 92, 100 

FitzGeffrey, Charles, epigram by, 
quoted, .5^76 

Fitzherbert, Sir Anthony, judge, his 
Book of Husbandry quoted, 114, 
117, 118, 121, 142, 143, 144, 161 ; 
his Book of Surveying quoted, 157, 
160 

Fitzrichard, Hugh, of Snitterfield, 1 1 1 

Fleay, F. G., his Chronicle of Drama 
quoted, etc., igy, sbg, 426, 441, 
464, 472, 473, 477, 478, 479 ; his 
Chronicle- History of Shakespeare 
quoted, 369, 372 

Fleet Ditch, 452 

Fleetwood, Sir Miles, Recorder of 
London, 189, 190, 191 

Fleming, Abraham, translator of 
Caius' tract on dogs, 171 

Fletcher, John, dramatist, 340, 342 

Fletcher, John, and Francis Beaumont, 
plays by, quoted or referred to ; 
Bloody Brother, The, 316; Captain, 
The, 435, 438; Coxcomb, The, 426; 
Cupid'' s Revenge, 427 ; King and 
no King, A, 439, 440 ; Knight of 
the Burning Pestle, 121 ; Maid's 
Tragedy, The, 438, 439 ; Nice 
Valour, The, 20J, 261 ; Noble 
Gentleman, The, 441 ; Philaster, 
or. Love lies a- bleeding, 438, 439 ; 
Vale7ttiniatt, 4^j ; Womati-Hater, 
The, 465 

Flexon, Mr., barber, of Oxford, 300 



Flores, Juan de, author of Aurelio 

atid Isabella, 384 
Floridans in Bacon's Masque of 

Flowers, 407 
Florio, John, 466 ; his Italian dic- 
tionary, 372 ; his translation of 

Montaigne, 247, 371 
Flower-de-Luce, 162 
Floyd, quoted, 281 
Folio of Shakespeare's plays, first, 

preface to, quoted, 465 ; referred 

to, 472 
Fontaine, Jean, and L. Schonbub, 

Travels of, quoted, 468 
Fordham, John de. Bishop of Ely, in 

Shakespeare, 318, 319 
"Fore-stall, to," sporting term, 166-7 
Fortunate Isles, Masque of the. See 

Jonson, Ben 
Fortune Theatre, 458, 459, 464, 477 
Fosse Way, Roman road from Bath 

to Lincoln, 65, 66-7, 68 
Fossett, Mr., Nonconformist divine 

at Stratford, 241 
Four Prentices of London, The. See 

Heywood, Thomas 
Four-Shire-Stone, near Chipping Nor- 
ton, Battle of the, 184 
Four Swans Inn, Bishopsgate, 210 
Fox, The. See jonson, Ben 
Fox or Foxe, John, his Acts and 

Monuments referred to, 316 
Foxe, Richard, Alderman's deputy 

for ward of Bishopsgate Within, 

211 
Fox-hounds, 171 

Fox-hunting at Marylebone conduit- 
heads, 191 
Francis, Mr., Archbishop's medical 

licence granted to, 302-3 
Frederick, Count Palatine of the 

Rhine, King of Bohemia, K.G., 

399, 400, 423-49 passim ; his 

company of players, 477 
" Free-board," agricultural term at 

Stratford, 141-2 
Frensham, Surrey, 380 
Friskney, Lincolnshire, frescoes in 

church of, gs 
"Frith," agricultural term, meaning 

of, 141 
Frost, John, actor, 471 
Fulbrooke, Warwickshire, 38, 39 
Fuller, Rev. Thomas, quoted, 55, 

281, 446, 47b 
Fulman, Rev. William, of Meysey 

Hampton, Gloucestershire, 40. 
Fumitory, 143, 161 



2 K 



498 



INDEX 



"Furlongs," divisions of common 

field, 141, 143-4 
Furness, Mr. H. H., his Variorum 

edition of The Te77tpest quoted, 

365-6 
Furnivall, Dr. F. J., referred to, $35 



Gale, Roger, F.s.A., his Four Great 

Ways quoted, 67 
Galliards, 195, 408-9, 415 
Gams, Series Episcoportwi, referred 

to, 379 
Gaol-fever, visitations of, 307-8 
Garrick, David, 53, 60, 447 
Garrick, Eva, wife of David, 447 
Gaze-hounds, 171 
Geneva version of Bible, quoted, 

381-2 
Genius, personified use of word, 237 
Geoffrey of Monmouth, his Historia 

Britonum referred to, 69, 94 
George, Duke of Clarence, brother of 

Edward IV., 3g 
George Inn at Stratford, 307 
George, St., Queen Square, W., 

Church of, 304, and see Stukely, 

Rev. William 
Gerard, John, his garden, 202-5 5 his 

ZTiJ^-^a// quoted, 147, 158, 161, 162, 

164, 165, 192, 202, 203, 204, 205 
Gerfalcons, imported from Iceland, 

437 

Gesner, Conrad, his History of Quad- 
rupeds referred to, 366 ; letter of 
John Caius to, concerning dogs. 
See Caius, John 

Gesta Grayorum, quoted, 196-9 

Gibbon, Edward, his History, etc., 
quoted, 94 

Giffard, Godfrey, Bishop of Worcester, 
76 

Gifford, William, his life of Jonson 
referred to, 369, 411, 412 

Gilbert, Elizabeth, nie Barnard, wife 
of following, 269 

Gilbert, Henry, of Locko, Derby- 
shire, 269, 271 

Gildon, Charles, his edition of Lang- 
baine, 312, 343, and see Langbaine, 
Gerard 

Giles, Nathaniel, Mos. Doc, of the 
Chapel Royal, 469, 470 

Giles'-in-the-Fields, parish of St., 
191, 192 

Gill, Dr., surgeon at Oxford, 300 

Gillyflower, varieties of, 162-3 



Gilpit, court of, at Stratford, 65, and 
see Guildpits 

Giraldus Cambrensis, his Itinerarium 
Cambrice referred to, 68; his 
Topographia Hibernica, 295 

" Globe " Shakespeare, glossary to, 
quoted, i^J 

Globe Theatre, 168, 206, 440, 450, 
459, 464, 466, 471, 473, 481, 482, 
483, 484 

Gloucester, Roman roads at, 67, 68 

Glover, trade of, 349 

Godeski, Mr., friend of George Hart- 
man, 302 

Godwin, Francis, Bishop of Hereford, 
his De PrcBsulibus referred to, 303 

Goitre. See " Bavarian pouch," Goto, 
" Derbyshire neck " 

Gold, found in Guiana, 360 

Golden Legend. See Voragine, 
Jacobus de 

Golding, Arthur, his translation of 
Ovid quoted, 388-9 

" Golds," popular name for marigold, 
160 

Gondomar, Diego de Acuiia, Conde 
de, Spanish ambassador, 415 

Good, Isaac, of Limerick, quoted by 
Camden, 2g4 

Goodson, Thomas, of St. Helen's 
parish, Bishopsgate, 211 

" Goodwife, Goody," title of, 240 

Gracechurch Street, E.G., 210 

Grain, Return of owners of, at Strat- 
ford, referred to, 218-19 

Gramer, Abraham, sidesman of St. 
Helen's, Bishopsgate, 213 

Grand Christmas at Inner Temple, 
194 

Grange, Prince de la, at Lincoln's 
Inn, 196 

Gravel Pits, Kensington, 190 

Gray, Thomas, notes on Hudibras, 
referred to, 2gg 

Gray-lags, 150 

Gray's Inn Fields, 193 ; gardens, 201, 
202 ; masques performed by gentle- 
men of, 406-8, 432-3 ; revels at, 

193-9 
Greade, Peter, servant to Laurence 

Bassel, 217 
Grebe. See Dive-dapper 
Greenborough, Warwickshire, 102 
Green Curtain play-house, 346 
Green Dragon Inn, Bishopsgate, E. C. , 

210, 213 
Greene, Rev. Joseph, of Welford, near 

Stratford, 22, 26, .27 • 



INDEX 



499 



Greene, Robert, his Alphonsus re- 
ferred to, 384 ; his Groatsworth of 
Wit quoted, 52 ; his Menaphon 
quoted, 153, 176, 293, 365, referred 
to, 199, 224 

Greene, Thomas, tdwn-clerk of Strat- 
ford, 148, 149 

Greenhill, J., friend of Aubrey, 346 

Greenwich, Lord Chamberlain's 
players at, 198 

Gregorovius, Ferdinand, his Ge- 
schichie der Stadt Rovi referred to, 

304 
Grendon Underwood, Bucks., 184-7 
Gresham College, 210 
Gresham, Lady, wife of Sir Thomas, 

215, 216 
Gresham, Sir Thomas, 211, 212, 

262 
Greville, Sir Fulke, K.B., 1st Baron 

Brooke, 337-8 
Greville, Robert, 2nd Baron Brooke, 

338 
Grey, Walter de. Archbishop of York 

(formerly Bishop of Worcester), 75 
Griswold, Clement, 131 
"Grove," technical meaning of, 146 
" Grysant, physician and pope." See 

Urban V. 
Gualtero, Prince, 359, 360 
Guards, Uniform of, at wedding of 

Princess Elizabeth, 431 
Guiana, Ralegh's visit to, 357-68 
Guild of Holy Cross at Stratford, 83- 

97 ; its chapel, 80, 85-97 
Guildhall at Stratford, 98-104; plays 

in, 98 
Guildpits, name of road at Stratford, 

65, 74, 142 
Gunpowder Plot, Ward's remarks on, 

315-16 

H 

Hades, agricultural term, 142 

Hadjis and Marabouts, magic spells 
of, 287 

Hakluyt, Richard, Archdeacon of 
Westminster, 397 ; his Voyages re- 
ferred to, s^S, 36b 

Hales, John, of Coventry, Clerk of 
the Hanaper, 108-9 

Halford, Warwickshire, 67, 68 

" Hall," in sense of council-meeting, 
148 

Hall, Edward, his 6^m/(7«, etc., quoted, 

43, 44 
Hall, Elizabeth. See Barnard, Dame 
Elizabeth 



Hall, John (1), painter, of Stratford, 
232 

Hall, John (2), physician, Shake- 
speare's son-in-law, 60, 225, 226, 
227, 230, 233, 235, 239-51 passim, 
254, 264, 307 

Hall, Susanna, nie Shakespeare, wife 
of John, 60, I3t, 22^-^0 passim, 
231, 242-^1 passim, 266, 268 

Hall, Rev. William, of Acton, Middle- 
sex, letter of, to Edward Thwaites, 
339-42 

Hall, William, vintner, of Lichfield, 
father of Rev. William, 341 

Halliwell (afterwards Halliwell-Phil- 
lipps, James Orchard, F.R.s.jF.S. A.; 
his Outlines x&iexxed to, etc., 27, 28, 
29, 75> ^og, 123, /JO, 134, 139, 140, 
156, 187, 227, 231-2, 233, 254, 258, 
268, 327, 332, 347-8, and frequently 
in notes. Other tracts referred to, 
99, 187-8, 339, JJj-, J^c? 

Hamlet. See Shakespeare, William ( i ) 

Hamlet, legend of, 224 

Hampson, Medii ^vi Kalendarium, 
referred to, 25 

Hampton Court, Masque performed 
at. See Daniel, Samuel ; tennis at, 
425, 437.; plays at, 437-8, 444 

Hampton- in -Arden, Warwickshire, 
112 

Hampton Woods, near Charlecote,322 

" Hara ha," Jeanne d'Arc's watch- 
word, 297 

Harberton, Devon. See Evelegh, 
Rev. Charles 

Hardwick, Warwickshire, 103 

Harington, John, Baron Harington 
of Exton, 436 

Harington, Sir John, 436 ; his trans- 
lation of Ariosto, 391-4 

Harley, Robert, Earl of Oxford, 340 

Harriers, 171 

Harrington, Baron Stanhope of See 
Stanhope, Sir John 

Harrison, John, publisher, 180 

Hart, Charles, actor, grandson of 
William (i), 52 

Hart, George, 271 

Hart, Joan, nie Shakespeare, wife of 
William (i), 52, 75, 224, 226, 227, 
256, 257, 324 

Hart, Sir John, Lord Mayor of London, 

215 

Hart, Michael, son of Wilham (l), 

225, 257 
Hart, Thomas ( I ), son of William (i), 

225, 257 



500 



INDEX 



Hart, Thomas (2), of Stratford, 

271 
Hart, William ( I ), hatter, of Stratford, 

224, 324 

Hart, William (2), son of William (i), 

225, 257 

Hartman, George, 302, his True 

Preserver quoted, 301, 305, ^69 
Harvey, Gabriel, quoted, 237 
Harvey, John, parish clerk of St. 

Helen's, Bishopsgate, 211, 212, 213 
Harvey, William, M.D., 301 
Haslewood, Joseph, f.s.a., quoted, 

448 
Hassal, Catharina, wifeof Hamoletus, 

223 
Hassal, Hamoletus, 223 
Hathaway, Agnes, persons of the 

name, 28, 29 
Hathaway, Anne. See Edwardes, 

Anne ; Shakespeare, Anne ; and 

Wilson, Anne 
Hathaway, Bartholomew, of Shottery, 

28 
Hathaway, Elizabeth, daughter of 

Thomas (i), 248, 267, 271 
Hathaway, families of, in Forest of 

Dean, 30 ; at Luddington, 26, 27, 

29 ; at Shottery, 28, 1 35 ; at Weston- 

on-Avon, 26, 30-1 
Hathaway, Gilbert, of Forest of 

Dean, 30 
Hathaway, Joan, wife of Thomas (i), 

307. 323 
Hathaway, Joanna, daughter of 

Thomas (i). See Kent, Joanna 
Hathaway, John, supposed father of 

Anne Shakespeare, 27-8 
Hathaway, Judith, daughter of 

Thomas (i), 248, 267, 270 
Hathaway, Ralf, of Minsterworth, 

Gloucestershire, 30 
Hathaway, Richard, of Shottery, 27, 

28 
Hathaway, Richard, alias Gardner, 

of Shottery, 26 
Hathaway, Rose, daughter of Thomas 

(I), 248, 271 
Hathaway, Samuel, supposed father 

of Anne Shakespeare, 28 
Hathaway, Susanna, daughter of 

Thomas (l), 248, 271 
Hathaway or Hathway, Thomas (i), 

of Stratford, 248, 267, 270, 271, 323 
Hathaway, Thomas (2), father of 

Agnes, 28 
Hathaway, William (i), of Lydney, 

Gloucestershire, 30 



Hathaway, William (2), of Ruardean, 

Gloucestershire, 30 
Hathaway, William (3), of Stratford, 

son of Thomas (i), 248 
Hathaway, William (4), of Weston- 

on-Avon, brother of Thomas (i), 

248, 267 
Hats and hatters, 324, 325 
Hatton House, Holborn, W.C., 519 
Hawkins, Sir Thomas, letter of 

Howell to, 279 
Hazlitt, William, referred to, 441 
Headborough, or Tithing-man, office 

of, 124; at Great Hillingdon, 

Middlesex, 189 
Head-lands, agricultural term, I42-3 
Headless men, legend of, 362-5 
Hearne, Thomas, 4'j, 86, 334-5 ; his 

Autobiography quoted, 335, 340 
Heartsease, 161 
"Hearts, Queen of," complimentary 

name given to Princess Elizabeth, 

424 
Heath, Nicholas, Archbishop of York 

(formerly Bishop of Worcester), 320 
"Heavens," technical meaning of 

term on stage, 462 
Heber, Richard, D.C.L., catalogue of 

his library, 444 
Hebraisms in Tempest, Hunter's dis- 
covery of, 387 
Hegenitius, Gotfried, his Itinerariimi 

referred to, 234 
Helen, Welsh legends of, and Roman 

roads, 94 
Helena, St., 93-4 
Helen's, St. , Bishopsgate, E.G. , church 

and parish of, 206, 207, 209, 210, 

211,212,213; priory of, 206,212-13 
Helen's Close, Great St., E.G., 212; 

Little St., 213 
Heliotrope or Girasol. See Marigold 
Heming (also Heminge, Heminges, 

Hemings, Hemmings, Hemynges, 

etc.), John, actor, 226, 400, 437, 

438, 443, 444, 483 
Henbane, yellow, substitute for to- 
bacco, 204, 466 
Henrietta Maria, Queen-Consort of 

Charles I., 466 ; her visit to Strat- 
ford, 248 
Henry IV., King, parts i. and ii. See 

Shakespeare, William (i) 
Henry IV., King of France, 198 
Henry V., ICing. See Shakespeare, 

William (I) 
Henry VI., King, parts i., ii. , and 

iii. .S^e Shakespeare, 'William (i) 



INDEX 



501 



Henry VIII., King, 108 

Henry VIII., King. See Shake- 
speare, William (i) 

Henry, Prince of Wales, son of 
James I., 415, 433; his death, 
307-9, 423-6 ; his players, 477 

Henslowe MSS. at Dulwich, 368, 
462 

Henslowe, Agnes or Anne, wife of 
Philip, 29 

Henslowe, Philip, 29 

Henwick Beds. See Cotton, Samuel 

Heraclius, Emperor of the East, 94-5 

Herbert, Edward, Baron Herbert of 
Cherbury, Walpole's edition of 
Life of, 443 

Herbert, Sir Henry, Master of the 
Revels, 484 ; his Office- B 00k , 441, 

443. 444, 446 

Herbert, Mary, Countess of Pem- 
broke, mother of William (i), 209 

Herbert, Sir Philip, K.G., 4th Earl 
of Pembroke and ist Earl of Mont- 
gomery, 397, 398, 405, 414, 480, 
481, 482, 484 

Herbert, Susan, Countess of Pem- 
broke and Montgomery, 397 

Herbert, William (i), 3rd Earl of 
Pembroke, 287, 397, 398, 405 

Herbert, William (2), 2nd Marquess 
and titular Duke of Powis, 443 

Hern-dogs, 172 

Hetley, Sir Thomas, Reports of, 
quoted, 146 

Heuter, Pontus, his History of Bur- 
gundy, referred to, 125 

Hexham Abbey, Northumberland, 
Dance of Death at, 88 

Heylyn, Rev. Peter, D.D., 312 

Hey wood, Thomas, 441 ; his Apology 
for Actors referred to, 462 ; his 
Four Prentices of London quoted, 

Hickes, George, Bishop-suffragan of 

Thetford, his Linguarum veterum 

septentrionaliuni thesaurus referred 

to, 339 

Higgens, Thomas, of Tiddington, 133 

Higges, Edward, saddler, of St. 

Helen's, Bishopsgate, 213 
Higgs, Mary, nie Barnard, wife of 

Thomas, 269, 271 
Higgs, Thomas, of Colesborne, Glou- 
cestershire, 269 
High Cross, near Nuneaton, 65-6 
Highgate, Middlesex, 165, 193 
Hill, Agnes, widow of John. See 
Arden, Agnes 



Hill, J., of Stratford, his essay on 

Shakespeare's birthplace referred 

to, 74, 75 
Hill, John, of Bearley, Warwick- 
shire, 116 
" Hiller, The," legend of, 380 
Hillingdon, Great, Middlesex, 189 
Hine, William, of Tiddington, 133 
Hiren, or the Faire Greeke, See 

Barkstead, William 
Historia Histrionica. See Wright, 

James 
Hobbies, or lark-hawks, 153, 154 
Hock, varieties of, 285 
Holbein, Hans, his "Dance of 

Death," 88, 89, 90, 92 
Holborn, wild-flowers in, 192 
Holborn Bars, 193 
Holdar, Hamlet, son of Humphry, 

224 
Holdar, Humphry, of Stratford, 224 
Holderness, phrase used in, 421 
Hole or Holle, William, portrait of 

Florio by, 372 
Holinshed, Raphael, his Description 

of Britaine quoted, 1 14-15, 283, 

284, 296 
Holland, Philemon, see Camden, 

William ; his translation of Pliny, 

quoted, 284 
Holt, J., his essay on The Tempest, 

398-9 
Holyoake, Rev. Francis, of Southam, 

Warwickshire, 240 
Holyoake, Rev. Thomas, son of 

Rev. Francis, 240 
Honywood, Robert, of St. Helen's, 

Bishopsgate, 217 
Hook Norton, Oxon., 184 
Hope Theatre, 477 
Horace, Carmina, quoted, 2^6 
Horehound, white, medical use of, 

300 
Hotspur, The, anonymous play, 438, 

445-6 
Hotwells, the, near Bristol, 241 
Howard, Sir Charles, ist Earl of 

Nottingham, Lord High Admiral, 

419; his players, 368, 461-2 
Howard, Frances. See Devereux, 

Frances 
Howard, Henry, K.G., ist Earl of 

Northampton, 429 
Howard, Thomas (i), K.G., 2nd Earl 

of Arundel and Surrey, 272 
Howard, Thomas (2), K.G., ist Earl 

of Suffolk, 395, 401 ; his players, 

289 



502 



INDEX 



Howe, Mrs., wife of Rev. Thomas, 
1S4, 344 

Howe, Rev. Josias, b.d., of Trinity 
Coll., Oxon., son of Rev. Thomas, 
184, 185, 344 

Howe, Rev. Thomas, of Grendon 
Underwood, Bucks., 185 

Howell, James, Epistol<B Ho-Eliancs, 
quoted, etc., 47, 201, 202, 277-97 
passtjn, 315-16, 322, 358-9, 409, 
410, 424, 440 ; his Survey of Venice 
quoted, 289, 292 ; verses by, re- 
ferred to, 185 

Howell, Rev. Thomas, of Cynwil 
and Abernant, Carmarthen, father 
of James, 410 

Howes, Mr., quoted by J. G. Nichols, 
436 

Hudtbras, notes on. See Gray, Thomas 

Hugh. See Evesham, Hugh of 

Hughes, Thomas, of Gray's Inn, his 
Misfortunes of Arthur, 195 

Hull, plague at, 245 

" Humana Mens," Kentish deed of 
gift, 72 

Humboldt, Baron Alexander von, his 
Travels quoted, 361, 365 

Humorous Day's Mirth, The. See 
Chapman, George 

Humours, probably a synonym for 
the above, 368 

Humphrey, actor, 169 

Hunsdon, Baron. See Carey, Sir 
George and Sir Henry 

Hunter, A., epitaph composed by, 
quoted, 234 

Hunter, Joseph, F.s.A., referred to, 
etc., 109, no, 112, 181, 182, 206, 
220, 321 ; his essay on The Tempest, 
357-94 

Hurd, Richard, D.D. , Bishop of Wor- 
cester, quoted, 412 

Hutchins, Rev. John, his History of 
Dorset quoted, 124 

Hyde, Edward, 1st Earl of Clarendon, 

273 
Hyde Park, 190 
Hymen, Masque of See Jonson, 

Ben 



Icelandic dogs, 171 

Ichneumon, 295 

Icknield Way, 65 

Idiots, custody of, 131 

" Ignorant Parliament," the, 318 

India [i.e. West Indies, etc.), 203 



Ingannati, GV , and Gf Inganni, 

Italian comedies, 200 
Ingleby, C. M., LL.D., referred to, 

S3, 148, 149 
Insatiate Countess, The. See Marston, 

John 
Insurances in seventeenth century, 

367-8 
Ireland, William, of Blackfriars, 456 
Ireland Yard, Blackfriars, 456 
Irish Masque, The. See Jonson, Ben 
" Irish rat," Shakespeare's allusion 

to, 295 
Irish wolves, legends of, 293-4 
Isidore of Seville, referred to, 363, 

366 
Ising-glass, 265 
Islington, 193 
Iter Carolinum. See Walker, Sir 

Edward 
Ivy, used for hops in brewing, 284 

J 

"Jack, Resolute," nickname for John 

Florio, 466 
Jackson, Mr. B. D., referred to, 

299 
Jacobs, Mr. Joseph, referred to, j/J, 

440 
Jacobsen, Danish traveller, referred 

to, 188 
James I., 59-60, 243, 244, 254, 308-9, 

312, 396, 401, 402, 429, 431, 433, 

434, 435. 436, 437, 47^ 
James' Park, St., 291 
Janssen, Geraert, sculptor, 231, 333 
Jeanne d'Arc, traditions concerning, 

296-7 
Jenkins, Thomas, schoolmaster at 

Stratford, 102 
Jenks, Thomas, of Aston Cantlow 

parish, 120 
Jewel ofjoye. The, quoted, 1 14 
"Job Cinere-Extractus," 213 
John, Bailiff of Stratford, 77 
John, Duke of Bedford, son of 

Henry IV., 3g 
Johnson, Gerard. See Janssen, 

Geraert 
Johnson, Samuel, LL.D., 48, 373, 421 ; 

his Life of Collins quoted, 383 ; 

Life of Waller referred to, 189 
Johnson, Thomas, M.D. , his additions 

to Gerard's Herball quoted, 147, 

192 
John's wort, St., 301 
Joiners' Company at Stratford, 248 



INDEX 



503 



JolyfFe, Thomas, of Stratford, 97 
Jones, Inigo, 278, 413, 419, 43° 
Jones, Thomas, of Tardebigge, Wor- 
cestershire, 41, 51 
Jonson, Ben, 47, 185, 236, 277, 278, 
279, 280, 286, 306, 343, 34S, 346, 
347. 388, 412, 447 ; his 
Alchemist, quoted, 20^, 454- '> ''C" 
ferred to, 278, 435, 438, 47 1, 472 
Augurs, Masque of, quoted, 463 
Barriers at a Wedding, described, 

419-20 
Bartholomew Fair, quoted, 205, 
411-J2, 454, 473; referred to, 

399 

Blackness, Masque of, described, 

414 
Catiline his Conspiracy, referred to, 

278 
Challenge at Tilt, described, 403, 

40s 

Conversations with Drummond, 
quoted, 310-11 

Cynthids Revels, quoted, 466-8, 
47 1 ; referred to, 33 

Devil is an Ass, quoted, 465 ; re- 
ferred to, 310 

Eastward-Ho, referred to, 478 

Epigrams, 278, 471 

Every Man in his Humour, 36g-'jo 

Every Man out of his Humour, 
368 

Fortunate Isles, Masque of the, 
418-19 

Fox, or Volpone, 278, 286 

Hymen, Masque of, quoted, etc., 
398, 404, 410, 480 ; described, 
413-18 

Irish Masque, described, 403-4 

Magnetic Lady, 278 

Mercury Vindicated from the Al- 
chemists, 463 

New Inn, quoted, 32 

Poetaster, The, 471 ; quoted, 53-4 

Prince Henry's Barriers, quoted, 
424 

Sejanus his Fall, 278 

Silent Woman, 471, 476, 477, 478, 

481 
Underwoods, quoted, 239 
Jonsonus Virbiiis, Howell's elegy in, 

referred to, 278 
Jorden, Edward, of St. Helen's, 

Bishopsgate, 218 
Jubilee at Stratford in 1769, 447 
Jubilee of Queen Victoria (1887), 
Masque at Middle Temple during, 
195 



Jubinal, Achille, his essay on La 

Chaise-Dieu referred to, 88 
Julia Strata. See Ryknield Street 
Julius Ccesar. See Shakespeare, 
William (i) 

K 

Kawasha, Indian god represented in 

masque, 406, 407 
Katharine of Aragon, Queen-Consort 

of Henry VHL, 452 
Keightley, Thomas, his Fairy Myth- 
ology referred to, 380 
Kemble, Charles, actor, 232, 477 
Kemble, John Philip and Stephen, 

232 
Kemp, William, actor, 53, 198 
Kemys, Captain Lawrence, 359 
Kensington. See Gravel Pits 
Kent, Edward, 248, 270 
Kent, Edward, jun. , son of Edward, 

271 
Kent, Joanna, wife of Eldward, 248, 

270 
Kent, plague in, 245 
Kentish Town, Middlesex, 193 
Kentwell Hall, Suffolk, 280, 281 
Kerns of Ireland, 294 
Kettell, Rev. Ralph, D.D., President 

of Trin. Coll., Oxon., 184-S, 344-S 
Kiddington, Oxon., 184 
Kineton, Warwickshire, 182, 327, 

328; informal club at, 331-2; 

hundred of, 64 
King and No King, A. ^is^ Fletcher, 

John 
Kingston, Mary Lady, 453 
Kingston Russel, Dorset, 323 
King-stone, near Long Compton, 

Warwickshire, 183 
Kington, West, Wilts., 347 
Kipper-nuts, 164 

Kirby, Monk's, Warwickshire, 67 
Kirk, Mrs., 300 
Kirkham, Edward, 475 
Kirkman, Francis, bookseller, 440 
Klelia and Sinibald. See Wieland 
Kiaves, The. See Rowley, William 
Knell, actor, 180 
Knight, Charles, quoted, 23 
Knight of the Burning Pestle, The. 

See Fletcher, John 
Knightlow Hill and Hundred, War- 
wickshire, 64 
" Knot," meaning of, 331 
Knot of Fools, A, unidentified play, 

438, 441, 479, and see Chapman, 

George 



504 



INDEX 



Knowle, Warwickshire, Collegiate 

Church of, II2 
Kraus orCrusius, Martin, of Tubingen, 

Turco-GrcEcia, referred to, 374, 378 
Kyd, Thomas, his Spanish Tragedy, 

quoted, etc., 125, 460, 461, 464. 



Lacy, John, actor and dramatist, 

34S 
Lady-smocks, 158-9 
Lagartos, i.e. alligators, 360 
Lake, Sir Thomas, 426 ; letters by, 

quoted, 427, 480 
Lamb, Charles, quoted, lOi, 441 
Lambert, Edmund, of Barton-on-the- 

Heath, Warwickshire, 1 16 
Lambeth, Surrey, river-sports at, 427 ; 

palace-garden at, 309 
Lampedusa, island of, its supposed 

connection with Tempest, 374-94 
Lancaster, Earl of. See Thomas 
"Lands" in husbandry, 140-I 
Langbaine, Gerard, his Accotmt of 

English Dramatic Poets, quoted, 

etc., 22, 442, 444, 473, 478-9, and 

see Gildon, Charles ; Oldys, William 
Larks, methods of catching, 153-4 
Latin School at Stratford, loo-i 
Laud, William, D.D., Archbishop of 

Canterbury, 233, 312, 457 
Lauremberg, Dutch farmer, 163 
Lavine or Lawne, William de, Doctor 

of Physic, 456, 458 
Law, Mr., his edition of Daniel's 

Vision, etc., quoted, 412-3 
Lear, King, See Shakespeare, William 

(I) 
Leatherhead, Lanthorn, character in 

Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, 4^2 
Leathersellers' Hall, 213, 215 
"Leek," provincial word, 421 
Lee Priory, Kent, 444 
Leeuwarden, Holland, epitaph at, 

quoted, 234 
Leicester, Earl of. See Dudley, Sir 

Robert ; Sidney, Robert 
Leland, John, his Itinerary quoted, 

J9, 63, 80, 82, 85, 86, 87, 97, 163, 

164, 188, 189, i9i,and^£iJ Hearne, 

Thomas ; Stow, John 
Le Maire, Guillaume, Bishop of 

Angers, 152 
Le Neve, Rev. John, his Fasti 

referred to, 342 
Lennox, Duke of. See Stuart, Ludo- 

vick 



Lenten observances in England, 350-1 
Lenton, Francis, of Lincoln's Inn, 

his Whirligig quoted, 46^ 
Leo Africanus, 381 ; Pory's transla- 
tion of, 397 
Lepanto, Ships at Battle of, 291 
Lepers, bath for, at Bath, 242 ; 

hospital for, at St. Giles', 192 
L'Estrange, Sir Roger, 274 
Lewis, Thomas, his Origines Hebrcea 

referred to, 387 
Leyden, John Ray at, 155 
" Leys," agricultural term, 142 
Licences, Archbishops', issued to 

doctors, 302 ; marriage, 31-6, 254-5 
Lichfield, Staffordshire, 66, 67, 340, 

341, 342; siege of, 338 
Liddell, H. G. , d.d., and Scott, 

Robert, D,D., their Greek Lexicon 

cited, 316 
Lilly or Lily, William, his Gram- 

malices Rtidimenta referred to, 102 
Limerick. See Good, I. 
Lincoln's Inn, 196, 245 ; gentlemen 

.of, 431 
Line-trees, 377 

Linnjeus, Carolus, referred to, l6l 
Lintot, Barnaby Bernard, his edition 

of Shakespeare's poems quoted, 

59-60 
Lipari, Islands of, 380 
Liquorice, used by druggists, 264 
Lisle, Henry de, of Clopton, War- 
wickshire, 116 
Lisle, Baron. See Talbot, John 
Lisle, Viscount. See Sidney, Robert 
Lisson Green, Middlesex, 192 
Livery of King's players, described, 

478 
Locket, Besse, in Cheshire tradition, 

156 
Lockhart, J. G., his Life of Scott 

quoted, 329 
Locko, Derbyshire, 269 
Lodge, Thomas,hisi?wa/;'M^e, quoted, 

165, 166, 293 
Lodington (Luddington), Ralph de, 

116 
Loftie, Rev. W. J., f.s.a., his History 

of London quoted, 190, 191, 209 
Loggins, Mr., of Butler's Marston, 

Warwickshire, 332 
Lombard Street, Royal Exchange in, 

262 
Long, Sir Walter, 260 
Long Compton, Warwickshire, 183, 

184 
Long Crendon, Oxon., 185 



INDEX 



505 



Long Melford, Suffolk, 280-2 ; church 
of, 280-1 

Long-purples, 157 

Lords, Thomas, of Tiddington, 133 

Louis XIII., King of France, death 
of, 273 

Love, Alice, of Wroxall, Warwick- 
shire, 111-12 

Loveday, John, his Tour quoted, 
82-3, 160, 183, 184 

" Love-in-Idleness," 161 

Lovel, Thomas, of Tiddington, 133 

Love lyes a bleedinge. See Fletcher, 
John 

Lovell, D. , translator of J. de The- 
venot's Voyages, 379 

Love's Labours Lost, See Shake- 
speare, William (i) 

Love's Labour's Won, question of 
identity of, 372-3 

Lowin, John, actor, 58, 59, 464, 482 

Lowndes, W. T., his Bibliographer's 
Manual referred to, ^/j, 384 

Lucas, T. , of Stratford, 149 

Lucatella's Balsam, 301 

Lucca. See Bonvisi, Antonio ; epitaph 
at, 229 

Luce, Mr. Morton, his edition of 
The Tempest, referred to, 146, 164, 

373 
Lucerne, Dance of Death at, 88 
Lucian, referred to, 296 
Lucrece. See Shakespeare, William (2) 
Lucy, Dame Elizabeth, 43-4 
Lucy family, 39, 322, 328 ; coat-of- 

arms of, 40-1, 42-3, 321 
Lucy, Mr., of Tiddington, 132, 133 
Lucy, Sir Thomas, 38, 40, 41, 42, 

43. 322 
Lucy, Sir Thomas III., jp, 322 
Lucy, Sir William, 44-5 
Luddington, Warwickshire, 26, 27, 

64, 102 
Ludgate, 452, 457, and see Martin, 

St., church of 
Ludgate Hill Railway Station, E.G., 

451 

Lud's-town, name for London, 69 

Ludwig of Nassau, Count, 436 

Lurchers, 172 

Lydgate, John, his verses on the 
Dance of Death referred to, 87, 
89 ; his London Lyckpeny quoted, 

324 
Lyllyng, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir 

Nicholas. See Bernard, Elizabeth 
Lyllyng, Sir Nicholas, of Abington, 

Northants, 268 



Lyly, John, his Euphues quoted, 313 

Lym-hounds, 171 

Lymore, 443 

Lyte, Henry, of Lyte's Gary, Somer- 
set, 160 

Lyte, Isaac, of Easton Piers, Wilts., 
260 

M 

Macbeth. See Shakespeare, William 
Machabray, Dance of. See Dance of 

Death 
Machin, Lewis, 477 ; his Dumb 

Knight referred to, 460, and see 

Markham, Gervase 
Macklin, Gharles, actor, 60, 269 
Magdalene ■ GoUege, Cambridge, 

Pepysian Library at, 449 
Magellan (Fernao de Magalhaes), 

Voyage of, 393, and see Pigafetta, 

Antonio 
Magi, cited by Hunter, 386 
Magliabecchi, 299 
Magnetic Lady, The, See Jonson, 

Ben 
Maid's Tragedy, The. See Fletcher, 

John 
"Mainour." 5"e(J Manner 
Mainwaring, Mr., of Stratford, 148, 

149 
"Majesty," title of, 319 
Malaga Sack or Wine, 285 
Malcontent, The. See Marston, John ; 

Webster, John 
Mallard, references to in Shakespeare, 

153 

Malmesbury, Wilts., 70 ; hundred of, 
260 

Malmsey wine, 259, 286 

Malone, Edmund, 232 ; his Variorum 
Shakespeare quoted, etc., 22, 22-3, 
26, 27, 28, 37, 38, 42, 49, 179, 180, 
181, 198, 223, 224, 246, 247, 248, 
251, 253, 2S9, 267, 269, 270, 271, 
328, 384, 385, 399, 400, 421, 442, 
443, 448, 462, and frequently in 
notes 

Malta, George Sandys at, 376-7 ; 
Knights of, 378 ; supposed trade 
with Lampedusa, 376 

Maltese lapdogs, 171 

Mandeville, Travels of Sir John, 
quoted, 363, 364, 370, 381 

" Manner," term in forest-law, 168-9 

Manners, Francis, K.G., sixth Earl 
of Rutland, 405 

Manningham, John, of Middle Tem- 
ple, 200 



5o6 



INDEX 



Manoa, city and lake of, 357, 358, 
360 

Mansell, Sir Robert, Vice-Admiral 
of England, 287 

Mansfield, Notts, Shakespeares at, 
109 

" Man's life," Hunter's suggestion as 
to, 381 

Manwood, John, of Lincoln's Inn, 
his Lawes of the Forest qnotei^, 166, 
167, 169, 170 

Marabouts. See Hadjis 

Maraiion, river, 360 

Maratti, Carlo, 447 

Marble Arch, W., 190 

Maria de' Medici, Queen-Consort of 
Henry IV. of France, death of, 
273 

Marian, Maid, and Sweep, characters 
in anti-masque, 408 

Marignano, Battle of, 386 

Marigold, varieties of, 159-60 

Markham, Gervase, part author of 
The Dtunb Knight, 460, and see 
Machin, Lewis 

Mark's Day, St., medieval beliefs 
concerning, 24-5 

Marlowe, Christopher, his part in 
I Henry VI., 335 

Marmot, Californian, 365-6 

Marriage of Thames and Rhine, The, 
See Beaumont, Francis, Masque by 

Marryat, Frederick, c.B., f.r.s., 
captain R.N,, quoted, 152 

Mars hill. Mars strete, 381-2 

Marsh, Mr., parson and astrologer, 
306 

Marston, John, Jj, his Cynic Satire 
quoted, 50 ; Dutch Courtesan, or 
Cocledemoy, 478-9 ; Eastward-Ho. 
See Jonson, Ben ; Insatiate Coun- 
tess, The, referred to, 477 ; Jack 
Drum^s Entertainment referred to, 
34 ; Malcontent, The, 464, and see 
Webster John ; Parasitaster, or the 
Fawn, referred to, 460, 479 ; his 
Wonder of Women, or Sophonisha, 
479 

Martial de Paris, quoted, 296 

Martin, Richard, Recorder of Lon- 
don, 431 

Martin - le - Grand, St. , Collegiate 
church of, 135 

Martin, St., Ludgate, E.C., church 
of, epitaph in, 96 

Martin, Outwich, St., E.C., church 
of, epitaph in, 234, 235 ; parish of, 
210, 211 



Marton, Thomas, of the Chapel 
Royal, 471 

Mary Axe, St., E.C., church and 
lane, 212 

Marylebone, St., Middlesex, 190, 
and see Conduit-heads 

Mary-lihes, 162 

Mary, Queen of England, her bene- 
factions to Savoy Hospital, 104 

Masques. See Bacon, Francis ; Beau- 
mont, Francis ; Campion, Thomas ; 
Chapman, George; Daniel, Samuel; 
Gray's Inn ; Jonson, Ben. 

Masques, Shakespeare's attitude to, 
41 1 -1 2; his masque in The Tem- 
pest, 145-7, 157 

Massinger, Philip, his Fatal Dowry 
mentioned, 473, and see Field, 
Nathaniel 

Master of the Game at Inner Temple, 
194 

Mastiffs, 172 

" Mathes," weeds in corn, 313 

Mauley, family of de, their coat-of- 
arms, 321 

Maurice, Count Palatine, K.G., 436 

Maximilian I., King of the Romans, 
Emperor-elect, 92 

Maydenstone or Maydestone, Walter 
de, Bishop of Worcester, 76, 
320 

Mayerne, Sir Theodore Turquet de, 
M.D., 244, 425 

Meadow-cress, 158 

Measure for Measure. See Shake- 
speare, William (l) 

Medical Society of London, 298 

" Meers," agricultural term, 141 

Melford. See Long Melford 

Mellificium Chirurgicz, by James 
Cooke, referred to, 249 

MencEchmi. See Plautus. 

Alenaphon. See Greene, Robert ; 
Shakespeare's use of name, 199 

Merchant of Venice, The. See Shake- 
speare, William (l) 

Merchant Taylors' Hall, Entertain- 
ment in, described 405-6 

Mercia, 71 

Mercury Vindicated from the Al- 
chemists. See Jonson, Ben 

Mere, John le, of Blackfriars, 456 

Meres, Rev. Francis, his Palladis 
Tamia quoted, 236, 372 

Merridew, Mr., of Coventry, Guide 
by, quoted, 92-3 

Merry Devil of Edmonton , The, re- 
ferred to, 282, 438, 440-1 



INDEX 



507 



Merry Wives of Windsor, The. See 

Shakespeare, William (i) 
Middelburg, wine-trade at, 283 
Middleton, Thomas. See Dekker, 

Thomas 
Midsutumer-Nighf s Dream, A. See 

Shakespeare, William (1) 
Milan, history of, supposed allusions 

to, in The Tempest, 381, 385-6 
" Milan skins," 4SS 
Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, 70-1 
Milliners in the Strand, 4S4-5 
Minden, Dance of Death at, 88 
Mines in Wales, 480 
Minsheu, John, his Ductorin Linguas 

quoted, 141, ig4 
Mirandola, Miranda and, jSj 
Mirrha, the Mother of Adonis, by 

William Barkstead, 477 
Misfortunes of Arthur, The. See 

Hughes, Thomas 
Mislonde, Esay, servant to Leven 

Vanderstylt, 217 
Missenden, Great and Little, 189 ; 

priory at Great, 189 
" Mistress," title of, 245 
Mithridate, 322 
Modwenna, St., 96 
Monarchicke Tragedies. See Alexan- 
der, Sir William 
" Monster," special use of word, 370-1 
Montagu, James, Bishop of Win- 
chester (formerly Bath and Wells), 

430 
Montague, John, f.r.s., 4th Earl of 

Sandwich, 376 
Montaigne, Michel Eyquem, Seigneur 

de, his Essays. See Florio, John 
Montgomery, Earl of. See Herbert, 

Sir PhiHp 
Montpellier, medical school at, 240, 

304 
"Moon-dog," 172 
Moore, Norman, m.d., his essay on 

Prince Henry's death referred to, 

307. 425 
Moore of Venice, The, play, probably 

Othello, 439 
More, Sir Thomas, at Crosby Place, 

Bishopsgate, 208, 209 ; his Utopia 

quoted, 2og 
More, Sir William, 453, 458 
Morley, Professor Henry, quoted, 214 
Morley, Thomas, of St. Helen's, 

Bishopsgate, 218 
Morris-dancing, 408 
Morrison, Richard, lord of the manor 

of Snitterfield, 108 



Morselli, "comfortable and delicate 
meates," 203 

Mortimer, Edmund, 5th Earl of 
March, 335-6 

Morton, John, Cardinal, D.C.L., Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, 319 

Moryson, Henry, referred to by 
Hunter, 367 

Much Ado about Nothing. See Shake- 
speare, William (i) 

Mulmutius, British king, 69, 70 

Mum, Brunswick, 283 

Mundungus, in tobacco, 205 

Mur, river in Styria, 367 

Murano, glass from, 322 

Murray's Handbook to Eastern Coun- 
ties, referred to, 281 ; Handbook to 
Warwickshire, quoted, etc. , 64, 66, 
So, 183, 331 

Murray, Sir James, 478 

Muscadel wine, 281, 286 

Muses' Looking - Glass, The, See 
Randolph, Rev. Thomas 



N 

Nantwich, Cheshire, 158 

Napier or Napper, Rev. Richard, of 
Great Linford, Bucks., 306 

Naples, history of, supposed references 
to in The Tempest, 381, 3S5 

"Naps of Greece, old John," 127, 128 

Nares, Robert, Archdeacon of Staf- 
ford, his Glossary referred to, 182, 
20s, 261, 284, 28s, 2gi, 4S4, 457, 
467 

Naseby.Northants, 134; Battle of, 299 

Nash or Nashe, Anthony, of Wel- 
combe, Warwickshire, father of 
Thomas (2), 226, 244 

Nash, Edward, cousin of Thomas (2), 
266, 267, 270, 271 

Nash, Elizabeth. See Barnard, Dame 
Elizabeth 

Nash or Nashe, John, mentioned in 
Shakespeare's will, 226 

Nash or Nashe, Thomas (i), of St. 
John's Coll. , Cambridge, his preface 
to Menaphon quoted, 224, and see 
Greene, Robert ; his Pierce Penni- 
lesse quoted, 365 

Nash, Thomas (2), of Stratford, first 
husband of Elizabeth, 60, 244, 245, 
246, 247, 248, 251, 266 

Nash, Thomas (3), son of Edward, 
267 

Nason, John, apothecary, of Strat- 
ford, 264 



5o8 



INDEX 



Nay land, Suffolk, monument at, 321 
Neil, Samuel, his Home of Shake- 
speare quoted, 92, 103, 251 
Nennius, British prince, legend of, 

69 
Nether Stowey, Somerset, 271, and 

see Walker, Sir Edward 
Neville, Anne, Countess of Warwick, 

wife of Richard, 336 
Neville, Richard, K.G., Earl of War- 
wick and Salisbury, jp, 336, 337 
Newark-on-Trent, remains of Dance 

of Death at, 88 
Newburgh, Henry de, 1st Earl of 

Warwick, 107, iii 
Newburgh, Roger de, 2nd Earl of 

Warwick, 107 
" New Disease," the, 425 
New English Dictionary^ referred to, 

142, 2gi-2, 31b 
Newmarket, King James I. at, 434 
Newnham, Thomas, priest, of Shot- 

tery, story of, 135-6 
New Place, Shakespeare's house at 

Stratford, 218, 226, 227, 245, 248, 

268, 270, 271, 272 
Newsham, Charles, of Chadshunt, 

Warwickshire, 331 
Newton, Prof. Alfred, referred to, 151 
Newton, Thomas, d.d., Bishop of 

Bristol, 48 
Niocols, Richard, his Twynnes Trage- 

die mentioned, 441, 442 
Nice Valour, The. See Fletcher, John 
Nichols, John, 448 ; his Progresses of 

Queen Elizabeth referred to, iip6, 

262-3 ; his Progresses of James I. 

referred to, jgy, 401, and in notes, 

401-36 passim 
Nichols (? Niccols), Richard, The 

Furies, by, quoted, 474 
Nicodemus, Gospel of, 93 
Nicosia, Cyprus, epitaph at, quoted, 

234-5 
" Nicosiana," name for tobacco, 204 
Night-crow, Night-raven, 154-6 
"Night of Errors, the," 197-8 
Noble Gentleman, The, See Fletcher, 

John 
Nobleman, The, unidentified play, 

439, 441 
Norden, John, his Speculum Britan- 

nice, quoted, 190 
Norembega, name of Virginia, 204 
North, Sir John, letter of Howell to, 

296-7 
North, Sir Thomas, his translation of 

Plutarch, quoted, 314-15 



Northampton, Earl of. See Compton, 
William ; Howard, Henry 

Northamptonshire, proverb concern- 
ing, 268 

Northumberland House, fire at, 448 

Northward- Ho. See Dekker, Thomas 

Nottingham, Earl of. See Howard, 
Sir Charles 

Numidian crane, the, 375 

Nuncupative will, its character, 246 



O 

Cannes, fish-god of the Euphrates, 

388 
Oar, golden, presented by Raleigh to 

James I., 358 
Ocellce, nickname for small-eyed men, 

284 
Odcombe, Somerset, 128, and see 

Coryat, Thomas 
Offa, King of Mercia, 135 
Oldcastle, Sir John, styled Baron 

Cobham, 282, 446 
Oldenburg, invisilDle smith of. See 

Hiller, the 
"Old Free-town," 382 
Old Town, street in Stratford, 225 
Oldys, William, Norroy king-of-arms, 

21, 22, 37, 41, 42, 47, 51, 59, 358, 

441. 442, 444, 445, 448, 449 ; and 

see Yeowell, James 
Olivares, Caspar de Guzman, Conde- 

Duque de, 292 
" Once againe," modus bibendi, 310 
O'Neill, Hugh, 2nd Earl of Tyrone, 

295 
Open - field system of agriculture, 

134-5 
Orchestra. See Davies, Sir John 
Ordinances against play-acting, 456 
Orellana, Francisco, 360 
Orford, Earl of. See Walpole, 

Horace 
Origines Hebrcece. See Lewis, Thomas 
Orinoco, River, 358, 359, 360, 363, 365 
Orleans, Howell at, 296 ; white wine 

of, 260 
Orleton, Herefordshire, 142 
Ormonde, Duke of. See Butler, 

James 
Ostler, William, actor, 471, 472, 476, 

483 
Othello. See Shakespeare, William ( i ) 
Otter-hounds, 171 
Overbury, Sir Thomas, 398, 409-10, 

425, 437 ; his Characters quoted, 

"3.423 



INDEX 



509 



Ovid, quoted, 236, 279 ; copy of, 

possibly Shakespeare's, 247 ; and 

see Golding, Arthur 
Oxford, 184 ; James I. at, 396 
Oxford, Earl of. See Harley ; Vere, 

de 
Oysters, fondness of Prince Henry 

for, 308 



Paddington, Middlesex, 165, 192, 

263 
Page, Sir Francis, judge, 194 
Paget, Agnes, Mistress of the Strat- 
ford guild, her tomb, 83, 86 
" Painted cloths," 121-2 
Painter, William, his Palace of 

Pleasure, 479 
Palamon and Arcyte. See Edwards, 

Richard 
Palladis Tamia. See Meres, Rev. 

Francis 
Palma, Sack from, 286 
Palmer, Adam, witness of Robert 

Arden's will, iig, 120 
Palsgrave. See Frederick, Count 

Palatine 
Pamphilus, St., 338 
Pansies, 161-2 
Pappus (potato), 204 
Paracelsus, Philippus Aureolus, legend 

of, 390 
Parasitaster. See Marston, John 
Paris, Dance of Death at Notre Dame, 

87 ; medical school at, 240 
Paris Garden, bear-pit and theatre, 

168, 472 
Parker, Sir William, his History of 

Long Melford referred to, 281 
Parliament-chamber, in Blackfriars, 

452 
Parr, Mr., of Blackfriars, embroiderer 

to Elizabeth and James I., 431 
Pasture, rights of, 144-S 
Patay, Battle of, 296 
Pathetic fallacy in Shakespeare, 421-2 
Pathlow, liberty of, Warwickshire, 

64, 77, 115. 142 

Paul's St., children of, 464, 470, 472 ; 
Dance of Death at, 87 

Pauw, C. de, his Richerches quoted, 
365. 366 

Pavane, 408 

Pavy, Salathiel, child of the Chapel 
Royal, 466, 469, 471 

Pawn, the, part of the Royal Ex- 
change, 262, 42S 

Payne, Mr. E. J., referred to, 361 



Peacham, Henry, of Wymondham, 
Norfolk, 428 

Peele, George, his Arraignment of 
Paris quoted, 147 

Peeres, Mr., of Alveston, Warwick- 
shire, 331 

Pembridge, Hereford. See Sher- 
burne, Rev. Dr. 

Pembroke, Countess, Earl of. See 
Herbert, Mary, Sir Philip, etc. 

Pembroke and Striguil, medieval 
Earls of, 68 

Pembroke House, Aldersgate Street, 
E.G., 209 

Penn, William, actor, 477-8 

Pennant, Thomas, referred to, 25 

Peole, Mr., of St. Helen's parish, 
Bishopsgate, 218 

Pepys, Samuel, his Diary quoted, 56, 
57, 331 ; his library, 448-9 

Percy, Thomas, D.D., Bishop of 
Dromore, 448 

Pericles, Prince of Tyre. See Shake- 
speare, William (i) 

Periwigs, Dr. Kettell's opinion of, 344 

Pestilence of 1593, 468 

Peter the Poor, St., 210 ; monument 
in, 108 

Petitions against Blackfriars Theatre, 

455-7 

Petrarca, Francesco, letter to Fran- 
cesco Bruni by, quoted, 87-8 

Petre, William ; 4th Baron Petre, his 
house in Aldersgate Street, 301 

Pett, Peter, commissioner of the navy, 

331 
"Petum" or "Petun,' name of to- 
bacco, 204 
Phaer, Thomas, M.D., 237 ; his trans- 
lation of Virgil quoted, 389, 475 
Phelips, Sir Edward, Master of the 

Rolls, 431 
Philaster. See Fletcher, John 
Philip I., Archduke of Austria and 

King of Castile, 323 
Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, 

125-6 
Phillipps, Sir Thomas, Bart., 30 
Phillips, Augustine, actor, 48, 53 
Phipps, Mr., surgeon, 305 
Phoenix Theatre, or Cockpit, 451 
Physic Garden at Oxford, 299 
Piccard, Nieuhoff, Dutch artist, 89 
" Pickadill," form of ruff, 432 
Pierce Penniless' Supplication. See 

Nash or Nashe, Thomas (i) 
Pierrepont, Henry, ist Marquess of 
Dorchester, 301 



5IO 



INDEX 



Pigafetta, Antonio, his Prima Viaggio, 
referred to, ^gj 

Pig-nuts, 164, 192 

Pilgrim Street, e.g., and the Pilgrims' 
Way, 451 

"Pink-eyed," meaning of, 284 

Pinks, 162 

" Pioned," meaning of, 146-7 

Pipe office and rolls, 453, 458 

Piqiie-devant beards, 325 

Pitt, William, witness of Robert 
Arden's will, 120 

PlacentulcB, "comfortable and deli- 
cate meates," 203 

Plague, epidemics of, 245 

Plato, Apologia Socratis quoted, 
237-8 

Piatt, Sir Hugh, his Jewell House 
quoted, 283-4 

Plautus, MencBchmi of, 197 ; English 
translation of referred to, 198 

Players, Acts of Elizabeth against 
strolling, 98-9 

Pliny, Historia Naturalis referred to, 
363, 366 ; and see Holland, Phile- 
mon 

Pocohontas, Virginian princess, daugh- 
ter of Powhatan, 407 

Poe, Edgar Allan, quoted, 155 

Poetaster^ The. See Jonson, Ben. 

Poincy, L. de, his Histoiredes Antilles 
quoted, 371 

Pollard, Thomas, actor, 4.81, 4.82 

Pomeranian dogs, 171 

Pons, Dr. Jacques, of Lyons, his 
work on bleeding, 244 

Pontefract, Yorkshire, liquorice grown 
at, 264 

Pope, actor, 53 

Pope, Alexander, referred to, 47, 48, 
236, 343 

Popham, Captain, letters discovered 

by, 364-5 

Porlock, Somerset. See Ward, Rev. 
Hamnett 

Porter, Hugh, of Snitterfield, War- 
wickshire, iig 

Porter, Captain Thomas, letter from 
Howell to, 287 

Portugal Row, W.C, Duke of York's 
Theatre in, 461 

Portugal, wine trade of, 284 

Pory, John, letter by, to Sir Robert 
Cotton, quoted, 397, 398, 413-15 

Post Revels, 195 

"Potan." i'^i? Powhatan 

Potatoes, 202-3 

Poultry, E.C., 262-3 



Powhatan, Emperor of Virginia, 407, 
432 

Powis, Marquess of. See Herbert, 
William (2) 

Prague, Battle of (1620), 424 

Priciputs, custom of, 228 

Preston Deanery, Northants, 268 

Pricket, buck of second year, 170 

Printing-House Square, E.C., 452 

Prior, Life of Malone, quoted, 447-8 

Private theatres, 451 ; their pecu- 
liarities, 463-4 

Probus, Emperor, 14$ 

Profanity in plays, 444 

Prologue, customs of, 465 

Prospero, Hunter's theories as to, 388-9 

Ptolemy, astronomer, 315 

Pudding Lane, E.C., 274 

Puddle Dock, E.G., 452 

Pueri Pauperes at Oxford, 340 

Puj-itan, The, anonymous play, 
quoted, 340 

"Purpoole, Prince of," 195, 196, 199 

Pylius, i.e. Nestor, 236 

Pythagoras, Shakespearean allusions 
to, 295-6 

Pytheas of Marseilles, 380 



"Quack," the lesser heron, 155 

Quarles, publisher, 313 

Queen Square, Bloomsbury. See 
George, St., church of 

Queen Victoria Street, E.G., 451 

"Queeny" (Quiney), Mrs., of Strat- 
ford, perhaps wife of Thomas (2) 
Quiney, 252, 261, 262 

Quiney, Adrian (i), 180 

Quiney, Adrian (2), Bailiff of Strat- 
ford, son of Adrian (i), 254 

Quiney, Adrian (3),sonof Richard (i), 

254 
Quiney, Anne, daughter of Richard 

(i), 254 
Quiney, Bartholomew, draper, of 

Fleet Street, 180 
Quiney, Elizabeth (i), wife of 

Richard (i), 258 
Quiney, Elizabeth (2), daughter of 

Richard (i), 254 
Quiney family in Isle of Man, 180 
Quiney, Rev. George, curate, of 

Stratford, son of Richard (i), 240, 

254, 265 
Quiney, Judith, nee Shakespeare, 

wife of Thomas (i), 27, 131, 223-7 
passim, 252-67 passim 



INDEX 



511 



Quiney, Mary, daughter of Richard ( i ) , 

, 2.54 

Quiney, Richard (i). Bailiff of Strat- 
ford, son of Adrian (i), 42, 135, 
179, 180, 219, 252, 253, 254, 
258 

Quiney, Richard (2), grocer in Buck- 
lersbury, son of Richard (i), 181, 
254, 259, 261, 267 

Quiney, Richard (3), son of Thomas 
(I). 259 

Quiney, Shakespeare, son of Thomas 

(I), 259 

Quiney, Thomas (i), vintner, of Strat- 
ford, son of Richard (i), 27, 252-67 
passim 

Quiney, Thomas (2), son of Richard 
(2), 261, 262 

Quiney, Thomas (3), son of Thomas 
(I). 259 

Quiney, William (i), son of Richard 

(I). 254 
Quiney, William (2), of Shottery, son 

of Richard (2), 262 
"Quiny," Mr., probably Rev. 

George Quiney, 265 

R 

Rabelais, Francois, his Pantagruel 

quoted, 144 
Rabon, John, of Wroxall, iii 
Radcliffe, Sir Robert, 5th Earl of 

Sussex, nephew of Sir Thomas, 

419 
Radcliffe, Sir Thomas, 3rd Earl of 

Sussex, his players, 99 
Ragged robin, 157 
Ralegh, Carew, son of Sir Walter, 

letter of Howell to, 359 
Ralegh, Sir Walter, his voyage to 

Guiana, 357-8 
Ralph. See Stratford, Ralph de 
Ramel, Henry, Chancellor of Den- 
mark, his visit to London, 206 
Ramusio, Giovanni Battista, his 

Raccolta, etc., referred to, jpj 
Randolph, Rev. Thomas, his Aluses' 

Lookijtg- Glass quoted, 261, 4^4, 

459 

" Rascal Jacks," nickname for a class 
of undergraduates, 345 

Rastell, John, his Termes de la Ley 
quoted, 33 

Rawlinson, Rt. Rev. Richard, D.C.L. , 
449; his MSS., 449, 476 

Ray, John, of Trinity Coll., Cam- 
bridge, his Collection of English 



Words quoted, 156, 421 ; his 

Travels quoted, 155, 161, 162,163; 

his Wisdom <?/" G^o^ quoted, 367 
Raya Indians, 365 
Raynoldes, William, mentioned in 

Shakespeare's will, 226 
Reade, William, of St. Helen's, 

Bishopsgate, 216 
Reading, Abbey of, 129, 132 
Records. See Bath, Stratford -on - 

Avon 
Red Bull Inn and Theatre, Clerken- 

well, 211, 459, 478 
"Red Lion," sign of shop in Buck- 

lersbury, 262 
Redman, Robert, printer, 303 
Reed, Isaac, editor of Shakespeare, 

445 
" Reed," technical meaning of, 147 
Rehearsal, The. See Villiers, George 
Renialmire, Ascanio de, of Black- 
friars, 456 
Replingham, Mr., of Stratford, 149 
Return from Parnass^is, The, quoted, 

54 

Revels, Children of the. See Children 
of the Revels 

Rhenish wines, 283, 285 

Rhyon-ClifTord, Warwickshire, 251 

Ribbisford, or Ribbesford, Worcester- 
shire, 443 

Rich, Sir Robert, Baron Rich (after- 
wards 2nd Earl of Warwick), letter 
of his wife referred to, 433 

Richard II. and the estate of Shottery, 
136 

Richard II., King. See Shakespeare, 
William (i) 

Richard III., occupier of Crosby 
Place, 208 

Richard III., King. See Shake- 
speare, William (i) 

Richard, Norman, owner of Wroxall, 
no 

Richardson, John, farmer, of Shottery, 

.24, 36 
Richmond and Lennox, Duchess of. 

See Stuart, Frances 
Richmond, Surrey, Prince Henry at, 

308 
Rider, William, his Twins referred 

to, 441-2 
Rimbault, E. F., Mus. Doc, f.s.a., 

his ed. of Old Cheqiie-Book, etc., 

quoted. See Chapel Royal, Old 

Cheque-Book of 
Rivers, Earl and Countess of. See 

Savage, Thomas (2) 



512 



INDEX 



River sports at Princess Elizabeth's 

wedding, 427-8 
Roaring boy, characterin anti-masque, 

408 
Robert. See Stratford, Robert de 
Roberts, Goody, of Stratford, 305 
Roberts, Griffith, m.d., his Welsh 

Grammar referred to, 279 
Robertson, William, D.D., his Charles 

V. referred to, j/9 
Robin Hood, 165 
Robinson, Frances, Lady, valentine 

by Howell addressed to, quoted, 

292 
Robinson, John, of Blackfriars, 227, 

456 
Robinson, John, of St. Helen's, 

Bishopsgate, and his monument, 

216 
Robinson, John, of Stratford, 230 
Robinson, Richard, actor, 482 

Robinson, Sir , of Stratford, 342 

Robinson, William, of St. Helen's, 

Bishopsgate, 213, 218 
Robinson, Winifred, probably wife 

of Richard, 482, 483 
Rochelle, La, green wine from, 285 
Rocque's Survey of London, referred 

to, 447 
Rodd, Thomas, jun., 374 ; his edition 

of Dowdall's letter quoted, etc., 

327, 328-30, 332 
Rogers, John, idiot, of Rowington, 

Warwickshire, 131 
Rogers, Joseph, of Stratford, son of 

Thomas (i) 323 
Rogers, Philip, of Stratford, 323 
Rogers, Thomas (i), of Stratford, 323 
Rogers, Thomas (2), son of Thomas 

(I), 323 
RoUo the Norwegian, coronation of, 

183 
Rollright, Little, Oxon., and stones, 

183 
Rolls House in Chancery Lane, 431 
Romeo and Juliet. See Shakespeare, 

William (i) 
" Rook, to," meaning of, 242 
" Rooky wood," meaning of, 155-6 
Rosalynde. See Lodge, Thomas 
Roscius Anglicanus. See Downes, 

John 
Rose Theatre, 368, 477, 478 
Rosemary, medical use of, 264 
Ross or Rous, John, his account of 

Earls of Warwick referred to, 335 
Rouen, death of Richard (Beauchamp), 

Earl of Warwick, at, 334 



Rous or Rouse, Francis, m.p., story 
of, 325-6 ; his Thule quoted, 235 

Rowe, 5ficholas, his Life of Shake- 
speare quoted, 22, 27-8, 38, 41, 48, 

49; 353 
Rowington, Warwickshire, no, 129; 

manor of, 129-34, 142-3, 157 
Rowley, William, his Knaves referred 

to, 434 ; his Spanish Gipsy quoted, 

169 
Royston, Herts., James I. at, 406, 

434. 437 
Russell, Elizabeth, Baroness Russell, 

456 
Russell, family of, rise of, 323 
Russell, Mr., of Stratford, 322 
Russell, Sir John, k.g., 1st Earl of 

Bedford, 323 
Russell, Thomas, of Stratford, 226, 

322 
Russet, 152-3 

" Russet-pated," meaning of, 151-3 
Rutland, Earl of. See Manners, 

Francis 
Ryknield Street, 65, 66, 67-71 
Rymer, Thomas, of Gray's Inn, his 

Tragedies of the Last Age quoted, 

440 



Sabel, Dr., of Warwick, 305 

Sack, varieties of, 285-6 ; Ward's 
story of, 300 

Sackerson, bear at Paris Garden, 
168 

Sadler, Elizabeth. See Walker, Eliza- 
beth 

Sadler, Hamnet, of Stratford, 181, 
223, 226, 230 

Sadler, John, of Bucklersbury, E.G., 
181, 182, 262, 267 

Sadler, Judith, wife of Hamnet, 181, 
223 

Sage, use as a drug, 264 

Salisbury Court Theatre, 441, 451 

Salisbury, Dance of Death at, 88-9 

Salisbury, Earl of. See Cecil, Sir 
Robert, and Neville, Richard 

Sallows, 166 

Salt-boiling at Droitwich, Worcester- 
shire, 163 

Saltonstall, Sir Richard, Lord Mayor 
of London, 215 

Salzburg, outbreak of goitre at, 366 

Sampson, chemist in Smithfield, 301, 
358 

Sandells, Fulk, farmer, of Shottery, 
34, 36 



INDEX 



513 



Sanderson, John, Turkey merchant, 

367 
Sandwich, Earl of. See Montagu, 

John 
Sandys, George, his Relation of a 

Journey quoted, 287, 376-7 
Santa Cruz de la Pahna, wine from, 

286 
Saraband, 408 

Satironiastix. See Dekker, Thomas 
Satyrs, 366 
Saussurite, 360 
Savage, Thomas (l). Baron Savage, 

281, 282 
Savage, Thomas (2), Earl of Rivers, 

son of Thomas (i), 281 
Savile, Sir Henry, warden of Merton 

Coll., Oxon., 396 
Savoy, Duke of, his ambassador, 

438 ; and see Carlo Emanuele 
Savoy Hospital, 104 
Saxony, beer in, 283 
Scarborough or Scarburgh, Sir Charles, 

M.D., F.R.S., F.R.C.P., 3OI 

Scarlet or Skerlett, John, of Snitter- 

field, iig, 120 
Scenery in theatres, 461-3 
Schonbub, Louis. See Fontaine, Jean 
School of Recreatio7t, c{\xo\.qA, 174, 175 
ScioU or Sciol. See Cioll 
" Scobberlotchers," nickname for a 

class of undergraduates, 345 
Scotland Yard, 432 
Scott, Sir Walter, Bart., story of. 

See Lockhart, J. G. 
Scottarit, ancient form of Shottery, 

135 
Scrope, — , Countess of Sunderland, 

letter of Howell to, 409 
Scudamore, Sir Clement, 181 
Scudamore, Helen, wife of Stephen, 

181, 182 
Scudamore, Stephen, vintner, of St. 

Stephen's, Coleman Street, 181 
Scylla and Charybdis, 288 
Sea-holly or eringo, 203 
Sedrida, Queen of Mercia, 72, 73 
Sejamts his Fall. See Jonson, Ben 
Selden, John, bencher of the Inner 

Temple, his De Diis Syriis, 387-8 ; 

letter to Jonson quoted, 388 
Serpentine, source of the, 190 
Sevenhuys, near Leyden, John Ray 

at, 155 
Severn, Charles, M.D., his preface to 

Ward's Diary quoted, etc., 230, 

232, 261, 298-9; and see Appendix 
Sewer, meaning of the word, 423 



Seymour, Sir Edward, k.g., Duke 

of Somerset, 87 
Sforza, Francesco, Duke of Milan, 

son of Ludovico, 386 
Sforza, Ludovico, Duke of Milan, 

385, 3S(> 
Sforza, Massimiliano, Duke of Milan, 

son of Ludovico, 385 
"Shadow" in theatres, 462-3 
Shadwell, Thomas, 346 
Shaftesbury, Earl of. See Cooper, 

Anthony Ashley 
Shakespeare, Agnes, wife of William 

(3), "2 
Shakespeare, Anne, wife of William 

(i), 26-38 passim, 227, 231 ; her 

grave, 82 ; inscription on tomb 

quoted, etc., 228-9 
Shakespeare, Antony, of Wroxall, 

son of John (4), 1 1 1 
Shakespeare, Ellen (afterwards Baker), 

wife of John (4), iii 
Shakespeare, Gilbert, son of John (2), 

SI, 52, 140 
Shakespeare, George, of Rowington, 

130 
Shakespeare, Hamnet, son of William 

(i), 223, 224 
Shakespeare, Henry, of Snitterfield, 

son of Richard (2), 112 
Shakespeare, Isabella, prioress of 

Wroxall, III 
Shakespeare, Joan, daughter of John 

(2). See Hart, Joan 
Shakespeare, John (i), of Rowington, 

130 
Shakespeare, John (2), son of Richard 

(2), Bailiff of Stratford, 22, 31, 74, 

7S> 78, 79, 104, 107, 112, 113, 120, 

179, 224, 348, 349 
Shakespeare, John (3), of Stratford, 

shoemaker, 21, no 
Shakespeare, John (4), of Wroxall, 

III, 112 
Shakespeare, John (5), of Wroxall, 

no 
Shakespeare, Judith, daughter of 

WiUiam (l). See Quiney, Judith 
Shakespeare, Laurence, of Balsall, 

no 
Shakespeare, Mary (,7iee Arden), wife 

of John (2), 25, 116, 120, 122, 224 
Shakespeare, Richard (i), of Rowing- 
ton, 130 
Shakespeare, Richard (2), of Snitter- 
field, 107, no, 112, 116 
Shakespeare, Richard (3), of Wroxall, 

no, 112 



2 L 



514 



INDEX 



Shakespeare, Roger, monk of Bordes- 
ley, 109 

Shakespeare, Susanna, daughter of 
William (i). See Hall, Susanna 

Shakespeare, Thomas (i), of Rowing- 
ton, 130 

Shakespeare, Thomas (2), Bailiff, of 
Warwick, iio 

Shakespeare, Thomas (3), shoemaker, 
of Warwick, no 

Shakespeare, William (i), son of 
John (2), his birth and baptism, 
22-5 ; his marriage, 26-38 ; deer- 
stealing legend, 38-45 ; the Dave- 
nant legend, 45-7, 347-8 ; journey 
to and arrival in London, 38, 
179-82 ; his traditional brigade of 
horse-boys, 48-51 ; as an actor, 
traditions of, 51-9; a member of 
James Burbage's company, 483 ; 
alleged letter to, from James I., 
59-60 ; his connection with Wilm- 
cote, 123-8; his copyhold in manor 
of Rowington, 130, 131, 226, 256; 
his interest in the Stratford tithes, 
I3S> 253 ; his interest in the Strat- 
ford common-fields, 139-40, 142 ; 
his protest against inclosure of 
Welcombe field, 148-9 ; probably 
present at Comedy of Errors in 
Gray's Inn (i594), 198; with actors 
at Greenwich Palace, 198; possibly 
a householder in St. Helen's, 
Bishopsgate, 205-6, 214, 218-20 ; 
a householder in Blackfriars, 205, 
227, 456; his will, 131-2, 224, 
225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 255-7 ; 
his death and burial, 230-1 ; his 
grave and monument, 82, 230-9, 
332-3, 341-2 ; Ward's notes on 
and stories of, 306-13; Aubrey's 
stories of, 345-8 ; Aubrey's butcher- 
boy story, 348-53 ; subsequent 
reputation of, 442 

Shakespeare, William (i), plays and 
poems of, references to and quota- 
tions from — 

All's Well that E7ids Well, 167, 

372, 435, 444, ^69, and see Bad 

Beginning makes a Good Ending, 

A, and Love's Labour's Won 

Antony and Cleopatra, 141, 153, 

284, 295-6, 4bg 
As You Like Lt, 32, 37, 12 1-2, 123, 
143, 165, 166, 293, 295, 352, 386, 
464 
Comedy of Errors, 196, 197, 198, 
199. 372, 382, 433 



Coriolanusy 156, 167, 46^ 
Cymbeline, 68, 69, 70, 71, 159, 167, 

291, 292 
Hamlet, 56-7, 58, 59, 90, 99, 100, 

146,153. 157,161, 167,283,292, 

304, 30s. 324-S. 329) 333, 343, 

464 
Henry IV., King, part i, , 84, 122, 

168, lyi, 182, 212, 259, 313, 388, 

445 
Henry IV., King, part ii., 84, 121, 

128, 143, 182, 196, 212, 255, 286, 

337, 352, 445-6, ^67 
Henry V, King, 143, 146, I4g, 

r^y, 160, 161, 168, 171, 265, 

317, 318, 319, 369,445 
Henry VI., King, part i., 44, 45, 

296, 335. 336, 462 
Henry Vl., King, part ii., 32, 72, 

280, 316, 317, 318, 336, 337, 350, 

351 
Henry VI. , King, part iii., 154, 

169, 207, 242 

Henry VIIL, King, 57, 58, 154, 

208, 329, 411, 450, 4^2, 463 
Julius Ccesar, 237, 315, 442-3 
Lear, King, 124, 143, 156, 158, 

160, 161, 170-1, 172, 340-1 

Loves Labour's Lost, loi, 102, 124, 

131, 145, 150, 153, 158, 159, 167, 

169, 170, 190, 202, 224, 238, 2gi, 

335> 352, 372, 380, 382, 412,468 

Lucrece, 119, 123, 180, 313 

Macbeth, 122, 155, 156, 1^2, 314, 

329 
Measure for Measure, 128, 187,259, 

351 

Merchant of Vemce, The, 325, 443 

Merry Wives of Windsor, The, 42, 

102, 122, 156, 167, 168, 203, 264, 

324, 331, 349, 362, 436, 445 
Midsummer- N ight' s Dream, A, 

150,151,153,161,173, 176,184, 

185, 186, 372, 421, 445 
Much Ado about Nothing, 79, 80, 

I53» 154-5, 186, 187, 224, 263, 

372, 438, 444-5 
Othello, 232, 263, 290, 364 
Pericles, 202, 313, 407 
Richard I I ., King, 84, 91, 10 1, 186, 

308 
Richard III., King, 43, 44, 207, 

219, 316, 319 
Romeo and Juliet, gi, 156, 239, 351, 

382, 460 
Sonnets, 37, 38, 90, 96, 101-2, 145, 

150, 159. 237, 238, 241, 263, 314, 

325, 329, 335 



INDEX 



515 



Taming of the Shrew, 64-5, 79, 99, 
125, 126, 127, 128, 173, 174, 175, 

324 
Tempest, 58, 144, 145, 146, 147, 
154, 157, 164, 239, 286, 288, 
302, 313, 324, 357, 361, 362, 370, 
373> 376, 378, 381, 388, 389, 390, 
391, 392, 393. 394, 398, 402, 404, 
409, 410, 41 1, 414, 420, 421, 422, 

423, 432, 434, 435, 437, 439, 444, 

448, 450, 460, 461, 462, 463, 4bg, 

474, 475 
Timon of Athens, 142, 757, 243, 

412 
Titus Andronicus, 102 
Troilus and Cressida, 237 
Twelfth Night, 103, 200, 224, 230, 

296, 351, 409, 445 
Two Gentlemen of Verona, 144, 1 70, 

314, 352, 372, 420 
Venus and Adonis, 141, 153, 154, 

174, 180, 238, 313 
Winter's Tale, 144, 162, 185-6, 

439. 443 

Shakespeare, William (2), of Temple 
Grafton, Warwickshire, 34 

Shakespeare, William (3), of War- 
wick, probably son of Thomas (3), 
no 

Shakespeare, William (4), of Wroxall, 
112 

Shanks, John, actor, 482, 483, 484 

Shaw, Julius, of Stratford, 230 

Sheffield, John, ist Duke of Bucking- 
hamshire, 59, 60 

Shenstone, Staffordshire, 67 

Sherburne, Rev. Dr., of Pembridge, 
Herefordshire, 347 

Sherley, John, printer, 249 

Sherry, 285, 286 

Shiels, Robert, 49 

Shilleto, A. R. , his edition of Burton's 
Anatomy quoted, 146 

Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire, 182 

Shirley, James, dramatist, 185 ; quoted, 

4S7 
Shoe Lane, Berkeley Mansion in, 

193 

" Shooty, brave Master," meaning of 

allusion, 128 
Shoreditch. See Curtain Theatre, 

Green Curtain play-house. Theatre, 

the ; tradition of Shakespeare's 

residence near, 206 
Shottery, 135, 136, 245, 261, 266, 

and see Hathaway, Anne, etc. 
Shrewsbury, Earl of. See Talbot, 

Gilbert 



Shuckborough or Shuckburgh, Sir 

Richard, of Shuckburgh, Warwick- 
shire, 321 
Sicily and its Islands. See Smyth, 

Admiral W. H. 
Sicily, origin of fumitory in, 161 
Siddons, Sarah, nee Kemble, actress, 

232 
Sidney, Mary. See Herbert, Mary 
Sidney, Sir Philip, 50, 209, 337, 338; 

his Apologiefor Poetrie quoted, 461 ; 

his Arcadia quoted, loi, 173 
Sidney, Robert, Earl of Leicester and 

Viscount Lisle, 192 
Siege of Rhodes, The. See Davenant, 

Sir William 
Silent Woman, The. 6'ise Jonson, Ben 
Silius Italicus, his Tunica referred 

to, 236 
Simpson, Giles, court goldsmith, 431 
Sims, James, m.d., 297 
Sinklow, actor, 169, 464 
Sipapo, River, 365 
Sir Francis Drake. See Davenant, 

Sir William 
" Sizings," word in use at Cambridge, 

340 
Skeat, Prof. W. W., Litt. D., his 

Specimens of Efiglish Literature 

referred to, 324 
Skelton, John, his Bouge of Courie 

referred to, 46J 
Skerlett, John. See Scarlet, John 
Skidmore. See Scudamore 
" Skyrrits of Peru," synonym for 

potatoes, 203 
Sly, Stephen, of Stratford, 127 
Sly, William, actor, 464, 466 
Smith, Cecil, his Birds of Somerset- 
shire quoted, 152 
Smith, E. Toulmin, English Guilds, 

referred to, 83 
Smith, Hamlet, of Stratford, 181, 224 
Smith, Helen, sister of Hamlet. See 

Scudamore, Helen 
Smith, Henry, of Stratford, 270 
Smith, John, actor, 477, 478 
Smithfield, 182 
Smug the Smith, 282, 408 ; synonym 

for Merry Devil of Edmonton, 440 
Smyth, John, his Lives of the Berkeley s 

quoted, 193 
Smyth, Admiral W. H., his Sicily 

and its Islands quoted, 374, 375, 

376, 377 
Snitterfield, Warwickshire, 107-16 
Snoade, Mr., of St. Helen's parish, 

Bishopsgate, 218 



5i6 



INDEX 



Socrates, 236, 237-8 

Solinus, referred to, 366 

Somerset, Duke of. See Seymour, 

Sir Edward 
Somerset, Earl of. See Carr, Robert 
Somerset, Edward, K.G. , 4th Earl of 

Worcester, son of William, 419 
Somerset, William, k.g., 3rd Earl of 

Worcester, his players, 99, 100 
Somerville, family of, 321 
Somner, William, his Dictionarium 

referred to, 339 
Sonnets, See Shakespeare, William ( I ) 
Sophia, Electress of Hanover, 424 
Sophonisba^ Tragedy of. See Marston, 

John 
Sore, Sorel, names given to bucks, 

170 
Southall, Middlesex, 190 
Southampton,Earlof. ^'tf^Wriothesley, 

Henry 
Southwell, Edward, letter by Dowdall 

addressed to, 328 
Spadafora, Placido, his Patronymica 

referred to, 236-7 
Spain, Potatoes in, 203 
Spain, Queen of. See Elizabeth (3) 
Spaniels, water-spaniels, 172 
Spanish Gipsy, The. See Rowley, 

William 
Spanish Tragedy, The. See Kyd, 

Thomas 
Specchio del Mare, See Coronelli, 

Vincenzo 
Spedding, James, /^j", 196 ; his Life 

of Bacon quoted, ig6 
Speed, John, his Historie, etc. , quoted, 

208; his T'/^^a^r^, etc. , quoted, 163 
Spence, Joseph, his Anecdotes re- 
ferred to, 47 
Spencer, Dame Alice, wife of Sir 

John, 210 
Spencer, Elizabeth. See Compton, 

Elizabeth 
Spencer, Sir John, Lord Mayor of 

London, 209, 210, 215 
Spenser, Edmund, 447, 47() ; his 

Faerie Queene quoted, 146, 241, 

361 ; Shepheards Calender, 146 ; 

View of Ireland, 294 
Spider, legend of, and unicorn's horn, 

302 
Spirit, sketch of, as represented on 

stage, 419 
Spleen-stones, 360 
Squacco heron, 155 
"Stable-stand," term in forest-law, 

169 



Stage, in private theatres, 459 ; 
covering of. See " Heavens," 
Shadow ; custom of sitting on, 
465-8 

Stags from Denmark, 437 

Stand, shooting from the, 169 

Stangate, in Lambeth, 427 

Stanhope, Sir John, 1st Baron Stan- 
hope of Harrington, 436, 437, 438, 
446, 447, 448 

Stanley, Ferdinando, 5th Earl of 
Derby and Baron Strange, his 
players, 100 

Stanley, Henry, K.G., 4th Earl of 
Derby, his players, lOO 

Starch, yellow, 410, 454 

Stationers' Register, referred to, 440 

Steele, Sir Richard, 57 

Steelyard, 282 

Steevens, George, f.r.s. , f.s.a., 
quoted, etc., 38, 237, 437-8, 444, 
445. 447 

Stephen, St., Coleman Street, parish 
of, 181 

Stilton, Matthew, of St. Helen's, 
Bishopsgate, 217 

Stirling, Earl of. See Alexander, Sir 
William 

Stone, Nicholas, master-mason, 447 

"Stooming" of wine, 285 

Stopes, Mrs. C. Q.,\itx. Shakespeare^ s 
Family referred to, 225, 248 

Stour, River, in Warwickshire, 67, 
68, 183 

" Stover," meaning of, 147 

Stow, John, \i\% Annals o^o\.&A, 210; 
his Survey of London quoted, etc. , 
85, 86, 87, 96, 104, 109, 152-3, 
192, 193, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 
211, 212, 213, 214, 216, 219, 263, 
4S2, 453. 45S 

Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire. 
See Ward, Rev. Thomas 

Strachey, William, of Gray's Inn, his 
Virgitiia quoted, 407-8 

Strange, Baron. See Stanley, Fer- 
dinando 

Stratford - on - Avon, Warwickshire, 
63-104 ; account of, by Dowdall, 
332-3 ; meaning of name, 320 ; 
records referred to, 100, 102, 156, 
258 ; register referred to, 324 

Stratford, John de. Archbishop of 
Canterbury, 80, 84, 85 

Stratford, Old, Warwickshire, 135, 
140 

Stratford, Ralph de. Bishop of Lon- 
don, 80 



INDEX 



517 



Stratford, Robert de, Bishop of 
Chichester, 80, 84, 85, 135 

Strawberry Hill, Walpole's library 
at, 447 

Streeche, Dame Isabel, wife of Sir 
John (I), 13s 

Streeche, Sir John (i), of Shottery, 

135 
Streeche, Sir John (2), son of Sir 

John (I), 135 
Street-Ashton, Warwickshire, 67 
Stretford, hundred of, Herefordshire, 

228 
Stretton-on-Dunsmore, Warwickshire, 

67 
Stretton-on-the-Foss, Warwickshire, 

Stretton-under-Fosse, Warwickshire, 
67 

Striguil, castle of, Monmouthshire, 08 

Stromboli, island of, 380 

Struma, or goitre, 367 

Stype, John, referred to, 114, 191 

Stuart, Arabella, 289 

Stuart, Frances, Duchess of Rich- 
mond and Lennox, 302 

Stuart, Ludovick, 2nd Duke of Lennox, 

405. 419 

" Study of books," use of phrase, 247 
Stukely, Rev, William, m.d. , etc., 

of St. George's, Queen Square, 304 
Sturley, Abraham, of Stratford, letter 

by, quoted, 135, 219, 252-3, 260 
Subsidy of 1598, assessment of, 206, 

and see Assessment 
Suffolk, Earl of. See Howard, Thomas 
Sugar, mixed with sack, 285, 286 
Sully, Maximilian de Bethune, Due 

de, in London, 210 
Sunderland, Countess of. .S^^Scrope — 
Supplication of the Poor Commons, 

quoted, 166 
Sussex, Earl of. See Radcliffe, Sir 

Robert and Sir Thomas 
Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire, 67, 

122, 125, 15s, 262 
Swan Inn at Stratford, 324 
Swanne, Mr., surgeon, 308 
Swansea, Glamorganshire, 287 
Swanston, Heliard, actor, 473, 481 
Swayne, Edward, of St. Helen's 

parish, Bishopsgate, 217 
Sycorax, Hunter's theories concern- 
ing, 389-90 
Sydenham, Thomas, M.D., 299-300 
Sylvester, Josuah, his translation of 

Du Bartas quoted, 4^^ ; his 

Tobacco Battered quoted, 260 



Symboleograpkie. See West, William 
Symonds, Ralph, his Diary quoted, 

273. 321 
Symons, Thomas, skinner, alderman's 

deputy for Bishopsgate ward, 215 
Syrian wolves, 293 



Tabard Inn, Southwark, 453 

Talbot, Charles, Baron Talbot of 
Hensol, Lord Chancellor, 194 

Talbot, Gilbert, 7th Earl of Shrews- 
bury, 206 

Talbot, John, Baron Lisle of King- 
ston Lisle, jp 

Talbots, English dogs, 174 

•' Talsheids," equivalent to faggots, 

Tamworth, 72 

Tanner, Thomas, D.D., Bishop of St. 

Asaph, his Notitia Monastica re- 
ferred to, 189 
Tanners' Act of 1530, 350 
Tardebigge, Worcestershire, 41 
" Tarrarags," nickname for a class of 

undergraduates, 345 
Taunton, coat-of-arms of, 321 
Tavistock Abbey, Devon, 323 
Taylor, Joseph, actor, 56, 58, 59, 482 
Taylor, Baron, his Voyages referred 

to, 89 
Taylor, John, the water-poet, quoted, 

47, 282, 322, 404, 463 
Taylor, Dr. Richard, of St. Helen's 

parish, Bishopsgate, 217 
Tempest, The. See Shakespeare, 

William (i) 
Temple Grafton, Warwickshire, 34, 

35 

Temple, Inner, solemn revels at, 194 ; 
masque of, and Gray's Inn. See 
Beaumont, Francis. 

Temple, Middle, masques and revels 
at, 195, 200 ; gentlemen of, 43 1 

Tennis Court Theatre, 461 

Tennyson, Alfred, first Baron Tenny- 
son, quoted, 155, 157, 158, 422 

Terriers, 171 

Thame, Oxon., 185 

" Tharborough " or " thirdborough," 
meaning of, 124 

Theatre, The, Shoreditch, 50, 180, 

483 
Theobald, Lewis, 146-7, 373 
Theobalds Park, Herts., 437 
Thevenot, Jean de, his Voyages au 

Levant quoted, 378-9 



5i8 



INDEX 



Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, brother 

of Edward I., 152 
Thompson, John, actor, 482 
Thorns, W. J., F.S.A., his Anecdotes 

quoted, 312 
Thorney Abbey, Cambridgeshire, 323 
Threadneedle Street, E.G., 234 
Throckmorton, Sir Robert, 321 
Thurnam, John, m.d., f.r.c.p., his 

tract on Waylatid Smith referred 

to, 380 
Thwaites, Rev, Edward, of Queen's 

Coll., Oxon., letter by, quoted, 339 
Thynne, Lady Isabella, 344 
Tiddington, Warwickshire, farm of, 

129, 132-4 
Titnon of Athens. See Shakespeare, 

William (l) 
Tippling Acts, 258 
Tithe-barn at Stratford, 102 
Tithes, story concerning, 325-6 ; the 

Stratford, 135 
Tithing-man. See Headborough 
Titus Andronicus. See Shakespeare, 

William (i) 
Tobacco, varieties of, 204 
" Toil," sporting term, 167 
' ' Tokens " of pestilence, 468, ^69 
Tomatoes, 202 

Tomlins, Goody, of Stratford, 301 
Tommasi family of Palermo, 375 
Toon, Stephen, apothecary, of Oxford, 

300 
Topago, Provinces of, 360 
Topcliffe, Yorkshire, 404 
Topsell, Rev. Edward, his Historie 

of Foure-footed Beastes referred to, 

366 
Tortugas, turtles, mentioned by 

Ralegh, 360 
Tortura oris, Elizabeth Hall's attack 

of, 243 
Tothill, William, his Transactions of 

Chancery quoted, 148 
Totnes, Earl and Countess of. See 

Carew, Sir George and Joyce 
Tottel, Richard, publisher, 89 
Tower of London, Dance of Death 

in, 88 
Town-hall at Stratford, New, 98 
Townsend, Thomas, of Tiddington, 

133 
Trapani, in Sicily, 379 
Trapp, Rev. John, of Weston-on-Avon 

and Welford, Warwickshire, 241 
Trapp, Rev. Simon, of Stratford, 246 
Travaile into Virginia. See Strachey, 

William 



" Traverse" on stage of theatres, 461 

Treacle, Venice, 322 

Treasurer of the Chamber, office of, 

437 
Trenchard, Sir Thomas, 323 
Trinidada tobacco, or Trinidado, 204, 

466 
" Troglodytic " caves at Lampedusa, 

375 
Trowbridge, Wilts., 134 
Tumbler dogs, 1 72 
Tumblers, companies of, 99 
Ttirco-GrcEcia. See Kraus, Martin 
Turner, Mrs. Anne, 409-10, 425 
Turnor, Dr. Peter, of St. Helen's 

parish, Bishopsgate, 217 
Turnspit dogs, 172 
Turpentine, Venice, 301 
Turquil the Saxon, 107 
Twelfth Night. See Shakespeare, 

William (I) 
" Twilled," meaning of, 146 
Twins, The. See Niccols, Richard ; 

Rider, William 
Two Gentlemen of Verona. See 

Shakespeare, William (l) 
Two Wise Men and All the Rest 

Fools, anon3'mous play, 441 
Tyara, Peter, epitaph of, at Leeu- 

warden, 234 
Tyburn, Middlesex, 190, 191, 410 
Tycho Brahe, 315 

" Tyings," agricultural term, 142, 144 
Tyler, Dorothy, of Shottery, 42 
Tyndale, William, his version of the 

Bible referred to, 382 
Typhoid fever and typhus, varieties 

of, 307. 308, 425 

U 

" Uncape," sporting term, 167 
Underwood, John, actor, 466, 467, 

469, 471-2, 473, 476, 482, 483 
Unicorn's horn, legends concerning, 

302 
Uniformity, Act of (1662), 262 
Union Street, E.G., 452 
" Unkennel," sporting term, 167 
Urban V., Pope, 304 
Urban of Belluno, 236 
Urso d'Habetot, Lord of Wilmcote, 

Warwickshire, 115 
Utopia. See More, Sir Thomas 
"Utter-barristers" of the Middle 

Temple, 200 
Uvedale, Sir William, 437 
Uxbridge, Middlesex, 189-790 



INDEX 



519 



Vale, Robert de, of Wilmcote, 116 
Valentinian. See Fletcher, John 
Valor Ecclesiasticus (1534), 112 
Vanderstylt, Leven, of St. Helen's 

parish, Bishopsgate, 217 
Varro, M. Terentius, Jonson's ob- 
ligations to, 416 
Vaughan, Henry, "Silurist," 185 
Vaughan, William, LL.D., his Golden 

Grove quoted, 25 
Venables, Rev. Edmund, precentor 

of Lincoln, referred to, 30J 
Venice, Howell at, 201, 287-92; 

players from, in England, 289 
Venner, Tobias, m.d., his Baths of 
Bathe quoted, etc., 242, sS^^ ; his 
Via Recta quoted, 259, 260, 261, 
264-S, 285, 286 
Venus and Adonis. See Shakespeare, 

William (i) 
Vere, Aubrey de, son of John, 281 
Vere, John de, 12th Earl of Oxford, 

281 
Vere, Lady Susan de, daughter of 
Edward, 17th Earl of Oxford, 397 
Verity, Mr. A. W., referred to, 473-4 
Verney, Sir Richard, 149 
" Veronesa," ship of Verona, 290 
Vertue, George, engraver, his MSS. , 

400, 438, 442, 444, 446-9 
Verulam, Roman road at, 65 
Villafranca. ^^e " Old Free-Town " 
Villiers, Sir George, K.G., ist Duke 

of Buckingham, 244, 409 
Villiers, George, 2nd Duke of Buck- 
ingham, The Rehearsal, chiefly by, 
quoted, 58 
Villon, Franfois, quoted, 296 
Vincent of Beauvais, his Speculum 

referred to, 363 
Vincent's Well, St., near Bristol, 

241 
Vine Inn, in Bishopsgate Street, 211 
Vine, The, near Basing, Hants., 143 
Vines in England, 145 
Vintners' Company, records of, re- 
ferred to, 181 
Violets in Shakespeare's plays, 162 
Virgil, legends concerning, 386 
Virgil, translation of, quoted. See 

Phaer, Thomas 
Virginia, tobacco from, 204 
Virtue, George, National Gazetteer, 

published by, referred to, i8j 
Vision of the Twelve Goddesses. See 
Daniel, Samuel 



Vives, Johannes Ludovicus, d.c.l., 

of C.C.C., Oxon., 125 
Voisy, Veysey, Voysey, or Harman, 

John, LL.D., Bishop of Exeter, 

125 

Voragine, Jacobus de, Archbishop of 
Genoa, his Aurea Legenda, 93, 94 

W 

Wake, William, D.D., Archbishop of 

Canterbury, 449 
Walford, Edward, his Greater London 

referred to, 342 
Walker, Barbara. See Clopton, Dame 

Barbara 
Walker, Sir Edward, Garter King-of- 

Arms, 271, 272, 273, 274 
Walker, Elizabeth, 7^^£ Sadler, 181 
Walker, Mr., Nonconformist divine 

at Ilmington, Warwickshire, 241 
Walker, William, godson of Shake- 
speare, 226 
Wall (Letocetum), near Lichfield, 66 
Waller, Edmund, 185, 344, 348; 

quoted, 439 
Wallingford, Berks., pestilence at, 

308 
Walpole, Horace, 4th Earl of Orford, 

443> 447 

Walter. See Cantelupe, Grey, May- 
denstone, Walter de 

Wanley, Humphrey, 340 

Warburton, William, D.D., Bishop of 
Gloucester, quoted, 411 

Ward, A. W., Litt. D., his English 
Dramatic Literature referred to, 
50,54,59, 295, 335 > 439, 443, 445, 
457, ^6/, 464, 473, 477 

Ward, Rev. Hamnett, M.D., of Por- 
lock, Somerset, 304 

Ward, Rev. John, Vicar, of Stratford- 
on-Avon, his Diary quoted, 225, 
229, 235, 236, 240, 244, 247, 252, 
254, 261, 262, 264, 265, 268, 272, 
273, 274, 280, 283, 2(^2,-2,26 passim, 
358, 425, 430 

Ward, John, actor, 232 

Ward, Rev. Thomas, of Stow-on-the- 
Wold, Gloucestershire, 313 

Warde Barnes, near Wilmcote, War- 
wickshire, 116 

Wardrobe, King's, St. Andrew's Hill, 
E.G., 452, 456 

Warmstry, Robert, notary, of Wor- 
cester, 36 

Warner, John, parish clerk of St. 
Helen's, Bishopsgate, 211 



520 



INDEX 



Warton, Rev. Thomas, b.d., 383-4; 
his History of English Poetry 
quoted, 384 

Warwick, 188 ; assizes at, 149, 328 ; 
collegiate church of St. Mary at, 
io7> 334 ; Earls of. See Beauchamp, 
Dudley, Edward, Greville, Neville, 
Newburgh, Rich ; epitaph at, 
quoted, 235, 238 ; 

"Warwick's Lands," 108 

Warwickshire, its divisions, 64, 163 ; 
Laud's visitation of, 233 

Washburn, Mr. , of Oriel Coll. , Oxon., 
quoted by Ward, 254, 430 

Water Lane, E.G., 451, 458 

Watling Street, course of Roman 
road, 65-6 

Watts, Richard, of Rhyon-ClifFord, 
Warwickshire, 251 

Waugh, John, tutor of Queen's Coll., 
Oxon., 342 

Wayland Smith, legend of, 380 

Wealden of Warwickshire, 163 

Webb, Agnes. See Arden, Agnes 

Webster, John, his induction to The 
Malcontent quoted, 4S4, 464, 466, 
and see Marston, John ; his White 
Devil quoted, J14 ; his Northward- 
Ho and Westward- Ho. See Dekker, 
Thomas 

Welcker, F. T., his Sylloge Epi- 
grarnmatum quoted, 234, 235 

Welcombe, Warwickshire, 127, 135, 
140, 148 

Wellesbourne Mountford, Warwick- 
shire, 133 

Wendover, Bucks., 188 

West, Thomas, of Snitterfield, War- 
wickshire, 108 

West, William, of the Middle Temple, 
his Symboleographie referred to, 
367-8 

Westbourne Brook, Middlesex, 190 

Westminster, roads from Tyburn to, 
191 

Westney, Richard, churchwarden of 
St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 213 

Weston-on- Avon, Gloucestershire, 26, 

27, 36 
Westward-Ho. See Dekker, Thomas 
Whatcot, Robert, of Stratford, 230 
Whately, Anne, of Temple Grafton, 

Warwickshire, 34 
Wheat, price of, in 1598, 219 
Wheatley, Oxon., 184 
Wheler, R. B., his History of Strat- 
ford xQiQXXQA to, etc., 60, 139, 232, 
233 



" Whifflers" at theatres, 197 
"Whispering Knights," the, at Roll- 
right, Oxon., 183 
White Lake, the, in Guiana, 358 
White, Robert, portraits of James 

Cooke by, 249 
Whitefriars Theatre, 426, 427, 451, 

471, 476, 480, 481 
Whitehall Palace, Dance of Death at, 

89 ; Masque of Flowers performed 

at, 195 ; weddings, masques, and 

plays at, 395-449 passim, 478 
Whitehall Stairs, sham sea-fight off, 

427-8 ; procession at, 432 
White Hart Inn, at Lichfield, 34I 
Whitgift, John, D.D. , Archbishop of 

Canterbury (formerly Bishop of 

Worcester), 33, 36 
Whitlow-grass, 192 
Wieland, Christoph Martin, Klelia 

and Sinibald of, referred to, 377-8 
Wild-fowl, breeding of, etc., 150-1 
Wilkes, Mr., interview of Capell 

with, 41, 51 
Willes, Richard, his translation of 

Pigafetta's Viaggio, jgj 
William IL, 107 
William. See Blois, William de 
Willughby, Francis, F.R.S., 155 
Wilmcote, Warwickshire, 64, 77, 

I15-16, 119, 123-8, 173, 174 
Wilson, Anne, n^e Hathaway, wife 

of William, 26 
Wilson, Arthur, his History quoted, 

etc., 395, 396, 399, 411 
Wilson, Mrs., of Stratford, 241 
Wilson, Rev. Thomas, b.d.. Vicar, 

of Stratford, 233 
Wilson, Mr., Nonconformist divine 

at Stratford, 241 
Winchcomb, Tideman de. Bishop of 

Worcester, 303 
Winchester House, 432 
Winchester pipes, 205 
Wincote. See Wilmcote 
Windle, Prof. B. C. A., m.d., f.s.a., 

etc., his Shakespeare's Country re- 
ferred to, 80 
Windsor, installation of the Elector 

Frederick in St. George's Chapel 

at, 436 
Winfrith, hundred of, Dorset, 124 
Winter's plan of Stratford, referred 

to, 142 
Winterbourne, Gloucestershire, ^03 
Winter's Tale. See Shakespeare, 

William (i) 
Winwood, Sir Ralph, lettei; of Sir D. 



INDEX 



521 



Carleton to, 414 ; letters of Cham- 
berlain to, 426, 431, 434, 435 

Wither, George, his Sighs for the 
Pitchers quoted, 315 

Wits, The. See Davenant, Sir 
William 

Wixford, Warwickshire, 67 

Woburn Abbey, Beds., 323 

Wolsey, Thomas, Cardinal, Arch- 
bishop of York, 452 

Wolves, legends of, 293-5 

Woman's Bridge at Aylesbury, Bucks. , 
188 

Woman-Hater, The. See Fletcher, 
John 

Woman is a Weathercock, A. See 
Field, Nathaniel 

Woncot. See Wilmcote 

Wonder of Women, The. i'^.s Marston, 
John 

Wood, Anthony k, his Athence quoted, 
46, 176, 185,^96 

Woodstock, Oxon., 184 

Woodward familyof Butler's Marston, 
Warwickshire, 3J1 

Worcester, i6j ; Bishops of, their 
privileges at Stratford, 71-8 ; Earls 
of, see Beauchamp, Richard (2) ; 
Somerset, Edward and William 

Worcestershire, hunting in, 175 

Worms, death of Lord Harington of 
Exton at, 4j6 



Wortley Hall, Gloucestershire, Dance 

of Death at, 88 
" Wo worthe the, Lenttone," ballad, 

quoted, 351 
Wrestlers Inn, Bishopsgate Street, 

211 
Wright, James, his Historia His- 

trionica quoted, 56, 461, 473 
Wright, Nathaniel, of St. Helen's 

parish, Bishopsgate, 213 
Wright, Thomas, F.S.A., 351 ; his 

Dictionary quoted, 134, 141 
Wriothesley, Henry, K.G., 3rd Earl 

of Southampton, 192, 199, 399 
Wroxall, Warwickshire, 1 10-12 
Wroxeter (Viroconium), Shropshire, 

66 



Yams, 203 

Yeowell, James, his Memoir of Oldys 

referred to, 447 
York, James, Duke of, his theatre. 

See Portugal Row 
Yorkshire, broom-groves in, 146 
Ypres, ware of, 122 
Yvor, St., 295 



Zoa, supposed city of, 381 
Zoara in Tripoli, 381 




PLYMOUTH 

WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON 

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